Texas!Earth Day!Passover!

We have started our final unit of study, TEXAS!  All cowboys need a hat and bandanna, and the children are learning why these pieces of clothing are much more than dramatic play props.

Another buckaroo ready for work.

Painting the Texas flag.....getting the proper position of the colors and the proper proportions is a good visual discrimination exercise.  Painting on the easel strengthens those shoulder muscles too.

Instead of giving the children a star pattern, we made a dot to dot and had them make their own 5 pointed star. This activity provided the children the opportunity to practice number sequence as they made the "Lone Star" for their Texas flags.

Iya is cutting out her star which she placed on her Texas flag.

Another symbol of Texas is the yellow rose.  We brought in some yellow roses for the children to observe.  It was interesting to watch as they tried to paint all the different petals.

After checking to see exactly where the little bits of red on the yellow buds would go, Ben is finishing his painting.

Lilly is standing in front of our new bulletin board.  If you have not seen it, please take a look.  Remember those early still life paintings and our first attempts at cutting---everyone has made huge strides!

Colin was so excited about our Texas flag that he decided to make one he could take home right away!

Another Texas activity--bingo using state and cowboy images.  Texas Bingo gave us a chance to introduce new vocabulary in a fun way, and the children loved guessing which pictures we were talking about.

This year we celebrated Earth Day for our Passover Experience!  Here Zac and Iya are using small shovels to fill old shoes with soil.  They had to work together, as  one child held open the shoe and the other put the dirt inside.  Then they sprinkled in some flower seeds----we hope all our shoes will turn into beautiful planters for our Gan Shalom.

Making bugs out of clay and other natural materials gave the children a chance to connect  Earth Day with Passover.  Pharoah would not have liked all those bugs showing up as a plague!

Finally, we recycled old shoe boxes to make bricks.  We spread putty on the lids and then the children stacked the boxes, just like the slaves who built the pyramids in Egypt. 

Happy Earth Day 2011!

Our Passover Seder and The Passover Play!

    On Thursday, the pre-k classes had a wonderful Seder. The tables were set with placemats and centerpieces created by the children. This year we are connecting Passover to Earth Day. Our placemats reflected this theme as we painted beautiful butterflies and backed them with newspaper. Our centerpieces were painted on pieces of Styrofoam, recycled from the frames for our auction masks.  The children participated in the Seder by singing the first of the 4 questions as well as all our favorite Passover songs. We want to thank everyone who helped us set up and clean up, especially our valiant soup makers!
     At Shabbat on Friday several of the teachers acted out the Passover story, giving it a special Temple Emanuel twist.  Cheryl, dressed in scuba diving gear, was the princess who found Baby Moses.   She surprised us by coming to our room for a photo opportunity.
     We want to wish everyone a Happy Passover as we begin the holiday on Monday night!

Making Charoset For our Seder!

Charoset is one of everyone's favorite dish for Passover. On Wednesday, all the children helped to make the charoset for our Passover Seder.  They  learned that charoset symbolizes the mortar that the Israelite slaves used with the bricks to build the pyramids.  As you can see from the pictures, the children used various motor skills and worked as a team to chop and dice our apples. After all the apples were cut, we stirred in grape juice and cinnamon sugar.   Then as all good cooks do, we tasted the charoset. It may look like mortar,but it tastes delicious!

Building A Pyramid

This week as we studied the story of Passover,we had the children build a pyramid using tape and their math skills.  The children knew that the pyramid should begin as a triangle,so Norah is showing Harriet where to put the second diagonal line.

Will illustrates how he would make a horizontal line in order to make the base of our pyramid.

The children have made the basic structure of the pyramid,but they know that they needed more lines in order to make the bricks of the pyramid.

Colin adds a horizontal line to begin making the bricks.

Zach is using gross motor skills as he reaches to make another horizontal line.

Calvin really had to stretch to add a horizontal line to the top of our pyramid.

Iya and Ben work together to make the first vertical line in our pyramid.

Alex and Lilly are discussing where they want to put their vertical line.

Evie added the horizontal lines that made our pyramid dimensional.

Everyone made a slave carrying a basket and bricks to put on our pyramid.  They used their knowledge of the Passover story to make some very sad faces on their slaves.  The children knew that the slaves were not happy about the hard work that they had to do for Pharaoh!

Happy Birthday Will!

      On Monday,April 4th, we celebrated Will's 5th birthday.  We sang our special birthday song as we danced around Will. We celebrate every child's birthday with this special song.  At the end of the song, each child pretends to be a candle, and then the birthday boy or girl makes  a wish and blows out each candle. Will's grandparents joined us for this fun birthday party.  We all enjoyed sharing Will's 5th birthday!!

If You Give a Curious George Child A Snake.....

       If you give a Curious George child a snake....In keeping with Laura Numeroff's delightful collection of children's books such as "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie?, we dedicate this blog to the adventurous spirit of our class !  If you give a Curious George child a snake, he/she will ask to see some lizards, frogs or a giant tortoise.  Why did they ask to see these particular reptiles?  Many of these reptiles live in the desert and what  better way to enrich our curriculum then to observe and explore these creatures first hand.  Lucky for us, Shelly had arranged for  Mr. Lewis, "The Snake Man", to bring all these creatures to pre - school on Tuesday.   He began by showing the children various reptiles and then he gave the children all sizes of snakes to hold.  At the end of the afternoon the children weren't the only expert snake handlers!