Wrapping up Chanukah

Dear Parents,

This week wrapped up out Chanukah unit with preparing potatoes for latkes, painting with olives and oil, and trying to make our very own olive oil! Here are some highlights of our week:

Sensory 

Our Peach and Blue room friends love sensory play.  

This week we were busy scrubbing potatoes to make them nice and clean for latkes!  Some friends enjoyed it so much they moved on to scrubbing all the tables as well. 

Discovery

 This week we greeted our friends with olives and olive oil.  Our friends were invited to touch, smash, and even taste the olives.  The Morahs talked about how olives were so special because they make oil.  Like the oil the Maccabees found in the temple.  They experimented with the olives by squeezing and observing the drips of oil or the effects of their actions.  The children were fascinated by the texture of the olive; it's slippery property and how that made it difficult to hold and squeeze.  Later we asked the children, "Do you think we can make oil out of the olives?"  and we tried by smashing them in a jar.

  

Then we extended our exploration into the art center and painted with oil.  The children were encouraged to stick their brushes though the olive and dip their paintbrush into the olive oil to begin an open-ended art exploration.  Having the olive on the brush reminded them that it comes from or is a derivative of olives!

  

We so much fun on the Chanukah Scavenger Hunt with you all! Thanks for joining in the fun.  We hope you  enjoy your winter break with your families!  We will see everyone in January.   

As always wishing you a restful Shabbos.

Morah Ora and Morah Felicia  

Continuing Chanukah

 Dear Parents, 

This week Blue and Peach rooms finished up their menorahs to take home and light on the first night of Chanukah, mailed off our Chanukah cards to our loved ones, and stayed in the Chanukah spirit with activities we did in the classroom.  Here are some highlights of our busy week:

Art

Our friends enjoyed exploring sticky glue and candles!  Everyone was invited to make a candle collage on cardstock.  Our friends chose the candles they wanted to use, rolled them in glue and chose where to  stick them.  Some friends liked breaking their candles into smaller pieces to add.  This was a great sensory experience. We also practiced counting as our friends placed them on their boards. 

 

Menorahs

This week the Morahs helped their friends finish up their beautiful Menorahs that we hope your family will enjoy and use for years to come.  As Morah Ora helped her friends, she went over how tolight the Menorah for 8 days at our house as we eat yummy latkes, and doughnuts to remember the miracle of oil.  We also played with dreidels and shared presents with family and friends. 

   

Blue room friends using homemade stained glass paint made out of clear glue and watercolor to paint and create their Menorahs.  We discussed the importance of keeping our Menorah Kosher with the placement and lining of each candle. They know that the Shamash is the helper candle and needs to be higher than the rest.

  

Math/Fine motor

Some friends enjoyed color sorting this week. A tray with assorted paper dreidels with a bowl of different colored dreidels.  Our friends were encouraged to match the colorful dreidels to corresponding colors on the tray.  Color matching is a great basic math skill we are learning and building upon. 

 

Working with playdoh is not only fun but also an awesome way to build those fine motor skills needed later on for gripping a pencil and writing.  Our friends enjoyed making Chanukah "cookies" and menorahs out of playdoh. After reading a book about Chanukah cookies our friends were eager to try and make their own. 

Next week we will continue to explore concepts of Chanukah.  We enjoyed learning and playing with all of our friends this week.  Wishing you a restful Shabbos, 

Morah Ora and Morah Felicia

Chanukah!

This week we began to introduce Chanukah through storybooks. The words and concepts we are working on with our friends are Chanukah, Menorah and dreidel. 

The first project of the week was making Chanukah cards for our dear grandparents!

We had stamping pads with Chanukah symbols, markers and paint stamping dots. Our friends were invited to the table to choose what they wanted to use to color their cards .

Mika likes to use markers, she opens and closes the marker all by herself.

Avigail used paint  dots the most to make so many dots on her card.

Ariel took two markers and was going in circular directions to create so many circles .

Daria tried everything that we had  on the table .

Our cards full of Chanukah spirit!! 

Morah Ora created a Menorah on our floor using tape. Our friends will be using this for "walk the line" - a fun gross motor activity targeting body awareness, motor planning, balance, coordination and listening skills. We will also use our tape Menorah to mark each day of Chanukah by adding tape candles and flames.

We explored candle wax through fine motor play with candles and our menorah. We used real candles, and the children have been practicing placing all eight candles in the menorah as well as the shamash candle. We counted the candles and sorted them by color and broken vs. non-broken. 

Another fun art and sensorial experience this week was a group art project using their feet and paint. There was a lot of laughter and excitement and careful dancing because it was so slippery! 

We will be exploring more about Chanukah in the next few weeks with so many projects, activities, and celebrations.

Shabbot Shalom,

 Morah Ora, & Morah ,Chaya. 

Meaningful project

Dear parents,

I’m so sorry I wasn’t in school these past couple of days, due to my kids not feeling well. BH They are feeling much better now.
Thank you for understanding!

Let me tell you a little about our gratitude project that we were working on in the past couple of weeks. Like I said in my previous newsletter, we were using different techniques to paint rocks.

This project is very meaningful to us because our friends did them by themselves with joy, happiness and a smile on their faces.
Each rock looks different just like we do.

 I (Morah Ora) always take pictures of our friends when they do meaningful activities
like sharing toys, giving each other hugs, enjoying food or playing with friend.

This time we printed them out and we will stick them on the rocks to remind us of kindness.
Our projects are getting delayed and we will be finishing them on Monday. They will be sent home after that.

Dear parents, I'm so grateful to be a part of the CJP family and to be a Morah to your little one .

 

Happy Thanksgiving and Shabbat Shalom !!
Morah Ora & Mora Chaya.

Gratitude/Kindness

Hello! Dear Parents,

We would like to welcome Ariel, a new friend that joined our classroom. We are so happy to have her join the CJP family!

Our friends have been practicing using kindness with our friends and Morahs. We talked about the mitzvos that our friends did at home and practiced using mitzvah hands, mitzvah feet, and our mitzvah mouth at school. 

Gratitude Project

This week in class, we are using different techniques of painting for our gratitude rocks.

Gratitude Project/Rocks:

On Monday: Our friends used sponge paint brushes to paint their own rocks.

On Tuesday: Our friends were invited to choose different colors of paint and make some drops in the box. Then they shake, shake, and shake the box till we see beautiful results!

On Wednesday: We squeezed paint and glitter inside the ziplock bags and put some rocks in them. We rolled, pinched, and squeezed the bag to create unique designs on our rocks! Some friends observed that it was a little bumpy inside!

 

Table Top Activity

We had play dough and cranberries on the table. Our friends used their grasping motor skills by picking cranberries with their fingers and sticking them inside the play dough. Then we all had a turn counting how many cranberries we stuck in.We counted in English and Hebrew and our friends repeated after Morah.

Ariel had six cranberries .

Ari had two cranberries.

Mika four cranberries.

Avigail, Oz, and Daria had seven cranberries.

It was hard for our friends to not taste them but they did a good job when Morah explained to them that today we are only using cranberries for playing and counting! 

 

Next week will be short week. We will continue to focus on gratitude and kindness in our classroom and we will focus on these concepts throughout this school year.

 

Shabbat Shalom,
Morah Ora and Morah Chaya  

Thanksgiving/Fall

Dear parents!

With Fall in the air and Thanksgiving around the corner, this week we used our senses to discover and investigate a pumpkin. Our friends took turns touching the outside of the pumpkin. They noticed the texture was mostly soft with a few bumpy rough patches around the pumpkin. Then we cut the pumpkin open and felt the inside. The texture was completely different!

Spice Exploration
This was a class favorite! We used our senses of smell, sight, and touch to explore and create a scent collage with spices. Our friends had a chance to smell each of the spices. They then decided which ones they wanted to use to create their own scent collage.

Our sensory table was filled with spices this week. Cinnamon, Paprika, and Oregano aromas were present as the children used measuring spoons and cups to pour spices from spoon to cup. We saw that the Paprika and Cinnamon spices left a residue on our hands.  

Next week, we will be learning about gratitude and making meaningful projects to be sent home.

Shabbat Shalom, 

Morah Ora and Morah Chaya 

Transportation

Dear parents!

We would like to welcome Daria Gabay and Oz Atlas to the Peach Room. We are so happy to have them join the CJP family!

Every morning of this week, our friends did different activities with transportation. One activity was to match the transportation puzzles. Аri and Daria enjoyed these puzzles a lot! 

Then our friends took their cars to the car wash in our sensory table where there was soapy water and sponges. Avigala and Mika were scrubbing their cars to make sure they were super clean. When our friends were done cleaning their cars, they took pretend people for a ride around the classroom. 

Another great activity our friends did was painting with cars. They stretched, walked, crossed the middle line, and drove their cars right through the paint during this gross motor activity. We also made our own traffic lights and Morah explained to our friends the safe way to cross the streets.

Shabbot Shalom ,

Morah Ora and Morah Chaya

Noah's Ark and Animals

Dear parents,

This week we opened our Peach Room and we are so happy to have a new beginning.

Our friends were so excited to explore all of the centers in the classroom: the sensory bin, kitchen, library, slide and much more. Learning where all of the materials go, where each center is, and making sure everyone feels loved and safe are our main goals. After all the classroom exploration, we were ready to learn and explore about Noah's Ark and the animals. 

Our friends had so many fun activities with animals. We had farm animals in the sensory table with sand and different size scoopers to find and name them all. 

The next day, we washed and scrubbed animals with sponges and toothbrushes which our friends enjoyed! With the beautiful weather outside, Morah set some activities outside for our other classroom friends to join in and play together with us.
           
We created wild animals with white paint and black paper. Each friend picked an animal they liked and dipped it in the white paint and then stamped it on the black paper to see the different foot shapes each animal has. We spoke about how animals and people have different shaped feet, some are longer than others, some are wider than others.

This week, we learned about Parsha Noah. Morah Ora made a make-shift ark out of a big cardboard box with cut out windows. We took turns peaking through the windows and said hello to our friends and Morahs. Then Morah Ora added a bridge to our ark. Our friends took turns going inside the ark and balancing their bodies on the bridge. These activities help our friends build some motor skills!   

 

Thank you for trusting us to guide your little ones.

Shabbat Shalom!

Morah Ora and Morah Chaya

First Week of School!

 Dear parents,

We are so happy to be back to school!  We had such a wonderful week of getting to know each other and class room exploration.

Mika and Ari are having fun in the kitchen area and pretending to cook and have long conversations.
Abigail likes to spend time in the library, looking through books and naming each picture, and climbing on the loft.

Avigail showed her interest in fruit puzzles. 

Our friends are adjusting very well and already know our morning routine:
Before we come in to the class we need to take off our shoes.  We then find the shoe prints that we made with Morah Ora and put our shoes on the right shoe print cut out.  We then go inside the classroom and wash our hands right away. 

This week we spent our morning exploration and davening time with our Green Room friends.
The green room friends are teaching us so much, playing with us and helping our younger friends while being very gentle.  The Green room helpers have been helping us learn how to give out Tzedaka and recognize their Hebrew letters of their name.  

Because it is so hot out, we skipped water play this week and next, and can't wait for it a get a little cooler in the mornings.  We will share our daily schedule with you next week, as we are still adjusting to the best schedule for the children. 

Next week's unit is "All about me".
We will also continue spending more time exploring the classroom and materials and getting to know each other.

Please send a hard copy or email a picture of your child, a family picture, any pets that they have, a picture of their room or house, and a picture of their favorite toy.  We will be using these pictures to make a book with each child to read together in our classroom. 

We had Shabbos party today, making challah, having kiddush, singing Shabbos songs, and reading special Shabbos stories.  

Please, if you can each send in a plastic shoe box with a lid, that way we can have sensory exploration in a COVID-safe way.  

Also, while we do have water from the water fountain to refill your child's water bottle, if you would prefer they drink bottled water, please send an extra bottle to refill your child's water bottle. 

Thank you and looking forward for next week!

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Ora and Morah Chaya. 

Purim day, Purim day, what a happy holiday!

Dear parents!

We began our exploration of Purim this week. We began by introducing the main characters of the Megillah: King Achashverosh, Queen Vashti, Haman, Queen Esther and Mordechai through finger puppets, dancing and storybooks.

ProjectThis week we painted canvases to create our own Shushan (castle)
Chumi chose green and yellow paint and she decided to mix them together.  Zelda choose green paint.  Abigail choose red paint. They enjoyed painting while morah Ora read them a purim story.

Our friends decorated masks with feathers and glitter so that we could dress up as Mordechai.  We also made crowns with stickers so we could be kings and queens.

Sensory table.
Our friends explored rice, and beans in our sensory table this week. Using funnels and bottles, they each created a gragger or noisemaker. We practiced shaking our graggers to make noise whenever they hear the name Haman.

During davening, we give tzedakah, but this week we talked about how this is one of the four mitzvos of Purim. We touched on the other three mitzvos: hearing the Megillah, sending food gifts to friends and hosting a festive meal. 

We had such a great time with spirit week this week, it was fun to see all of the creative outfits your children were wearing! Thanks for joining in the Purim fun!

See you on Monday for our Purim Costume Dress up Day, and hope to see you at the Purim Party on Tuesday too!

Shabbat Shalom!
Morah Ora.

Dear Peach Room Parents.

We began exploring Tu B'Shvat, or the New Year for Trees, this week. Friends have been working on an ongoing group project. They are creating their own Peach Room Family Tree. Everyday we add some more to our tree as we talk about the different parts of the tree- roots, trunk & bark, branches, and leaves. They explored different textures and mediums in this collage work. Our friends began by painting our cardboard tree all together. Then they added some bark that we found on our playground. We used sponges to create a tree-like texture and we glued some leaves that we collected outside.

In the sensory table this week  we had soil, beans and pots.  We were practicing to plant.

 As we do this we talk about all of the things that plants and trees need to grow healthy- soil, water and sunlight to make their own food.

Next week we are going to plants our own pots to see how beans or seeds grow in to something big .

At the table clay, playdoh and branches were set out for our friends to sculpt their own trees. Playing and molding clay can be extremely therapeutic for a child who needs to physically express their emotions. In addition, their fingers are working to strengthen their fine motor skills and dexterity while their brain is working on their imagination and creativity.

Shabbot Shalom!

Morah Ora