Pajama Day, Lunar New Year and much more!

Dear Kindergarten Families,

We had a very exciting week in Kindergarten! We welcomed in Adar with Pajama Day, a Talent show, and a parade! We even got to enjoy yummy treats and have snack with our buddies!

In Math, we have been learning about counting and comparing numbers and sets of objects up to 100. We compared sets of various objects and decided how many more or less each stack had than the other.

On the first day after our mid-winter break, Monday, February 26, we will have the 100th Day of School. It will be a celebration of learning and our friendship for 100 days and we will do many fun activities connected to counting to 100. Every student is asked to bring a labeled ziplock bag or small box of 100 objects. It could be anything THE CHILDREN would count at home: raisins, crayons, beans, legos, straws, choc. chips, paper clips, buttons, little cars, baseball cards, cheerios, pennies, stickers, or anything you can think of. The most important part is for the children to count it by themselves. We suggest they organize the objects in 10 groups of 10 and count by 10s. It’s a fun project to do over the break! 🙂

In English Language Arts, we learned the letter Uu and the sound /u/ it makes (as in ‘Under’). We practiced forming upper and lowercase Uu letters using our Handwriting Without Tears books, wooden planks, and finding words that start with U and drawing pictures of them. In our Words Their Way Spelling program, we practiced reading and sorting words with short vowels /a/ and /u/. We have also been doing lots of “Word Search” activities and having a better understanding and more fun playing “Hangman.”

In Writing, we shared our own fairy tales with the class and our buddies. We also wrote scripts of famous fairy tales (Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, The Little Red Hen, and Gingerbread Man) in small groups, divided roles, practiced, made costumes and performed them for each other.

In Social Studies, we learned about the Lunar New Year. Noa’s mom came in and shared with us the customs of Korean Lunar New Year. The children learned many facts about this holiday, colored some pictures, and had a chance to see and even wear traditional Korean festive clothing!  On Wednesday, we read “My First Chinese New Year” by Karen Katz to learn about Chinese Lunar New Year. We practiced writing Chinese characters, made traditional red envelopes with money for prosperity, and colored in dragons used in celebrations of Chinese New Year. On Friday, we celebrated the Lunar New Year with special treats and traditions.  

In Science, we continued our unit Exploring Plants and Animals. We talked about dinosaurs. We read “The Day of the Dinosaur” by Stan and Jan Berenstein and learned about different types of dinosaurs. We then explored fossils using shells and playdough and also got to be archeologists and find dinosaurs in the sand. Finally, we created a class book about what we thought would happen if the dinosaurs were alive today.

Hebrew and Judaics

This week we started to  learn about objects in the classroom (kitah).  For example, shulchan – (table) , kiseh- (chair), shatiach- (rug), luach ( board), sefer (book), tzvaeem (crayons), lego- lego , kubiyot-blocks, bubot-dolls, puzzle- puzzle,  and tza’atzuim (toys).

On Thursday, we celebrated Rosh Chodesh Adar by singing “Mishenichnas Adar marbim besimchah” or “When Adar arrives we increase in joy.” It was a Pajama day, and we led the school parade in our pajamas and with our stuffed dolls and animals.  The children were very excited. We learned that Adar is a month filled with simcha- joy.

We practiced the morning song as part of our morning routine and acted out the song: “Ani kam baboker, pokeach enayim, rochez panim, metzachtzeach shinayim, lovesh bgadim , noel naalayim veochel aruchat boker” (I wake up in the morning, open my eyes, wash my face, brush my teeth, put clothes on, put shoes on, and eat breakfast).  We also started learning a new song “Chamisha shovavim” which is about five children who rolled on the bed and every time one of them fell off the bed ( similar to five little monkeys in English). The children happily acted out the song with their pajamas and a blanket.

We started learning about the Purim story and the different characters in the Megillah. The children drew and colored: Mordechai, Haman, Achashverosh, Vashti and Queen Esther (Malkat Esther) and created masks.

Have a safe and enjoyable break!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rachel, Regina, Irit and Ilana

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Reading our published Fairy Tales to the class!

Jinah told us about traditions of the Lunar New Year in Korea. We tried on traditional clothing and colored pictures of the celebration

Karen did a puppet show about kindness and friendship!

We enjoyed reading and sharing with our classmates and buddies the books that we wrote!

Learning about Chinese New Year through experiential learning: practicing writing Chinese words, making red envelopes and coloring traditional dragons

In Math, we counted and compared sets of tiles

More learning about Chinese New Year!

Pajama Day and a snack with our 4th grade buddies!

We had a chance to read our Fairy Tales to our buddies!

Pajama Day parade

Learning about Dinosaurs through experiential learning: building a dinosaur with recycled materials, digging for dinosaur bones like real paleontologists, and making fossils with playdo and seashells.

And – for dessert – we made pancakes and hot chocolate! Yummmmm!!!

Performing our fairy tales:

The Little Red Hen

The Gingerbread Man

The Three Bears and Goldilocks

The Three Pigs

Getting ready for our celebration

Some exercise outside!

We are ready to welcome the Lunar New Year!

Fireworks!

Art with Iviva:

We are already starting to think about Purim and the school’s celebration on March 1st. In preparation, we first reminded Iviva of the names of some of the characters, Queens: Esther and Vashti, King Ahashveros, Mordechai and Haman, and then listened to Iviva read the story of Purim. We are using paper plates to make graggers, drawing characters from the story, and modern celebrations, including hamentashen and family dinners.