KDH City Planning

KDH have a special visitor yesterday. Mr. Karl Smith, a city planner for Midtown Atlanta and Ms. Jenny 's husband, honored our request to come in and make a presentation to the children.

Mr. Karl introduced himself and talked to the children about his education and career path. He is both an architect and city planner. Mr. Karl told the children that planners think about what the city will look like in the future. Gabi defined the future as what will be when they get older. Mr. Karl explained that he plans for what may be next year or even twenty years down the road. Shayan told us that his father does construction. We discussed how builders use the architects' drawings to guide them. Harper told us that when their house was built her father painted the inside purple because that is her favorite color.

 Mr. Karl and Ms. Jenny distributed miniature buildings, one to each child.There were houses, apartment buildings, tall office buildings, stores, an airport, and even a shul. Each child put his/her building on the middle of the carpet without a plan.

Mr. Karl asked the children to look at what they had assembled and think about it. Were the buildings too close to each other? Was there room for streets for walking? Were there parks? How would people have access to the tops of buildngs especially the ones that were placed on top of another building!

 Then, we were shown the large maps that Mr. Karl had brought in. We saw how streets are drawn on a map in colors according to how important they are. We viewed where on the map there may be some development. 

 We discussed what the children would like and need in a city. A zoo was mentioned, trees and grass, dentists and doctors, and parks for running.  

The class walked quickly across the room to the block area to put their thoughts onto paper and build their cities. 

We hung up their designs in the block center and are watching to see how these ideas unfold!

Thank you Mr. Karl and Ms. Jenny for an interesting and informative lesson!

Morah Ruth

Morah Yael 

Morah Gail

KDH Bucket Building

On Friday morning, Pearl and Henia came in and excitedly told the class, "Our mother brought in buckets, lots of bucket!!" Everyone agreed that we should go outside and see what that was all about! We found two tall stacks of black buckets that look like the ones used for flower bouquets in Trader Joe's.

The children quickly figured out how to stack the buckets. They built a fortress with bucket chairs inside. That was fun but small. They took that apart and built a house. They sat on the outside blocks that were in the house.

We wondered how many buckets we had. We counted...... and counted.... There were 107 buckets!

The buckets are also fun to use in the sandbox and put on our arms and legs to look like robots.

We can't wait to see what else the children will do with the buckets!

It's Funner Together in KB-3

It says it in all the books ;) "In most 2 year olds, parallel play is primarily seen in their play. As the children mature, they start to play with each other."

At the beginning of the year sharing, waiting our turn, negotiating and collaborating was difficult. As morahs, we did our best to guide, model and give  the children the tools to develop these skills. It is a delight to watch the shift happen within our classroom.

The above pictures are a peek at our KB-3 children playing together.They worked together building a magna-tiles castle. Some children held up the tower while other children added new squares. In another picture Shane and Annabel are taking turns throwing the ball to each other. Morning trays are usually a one person activity but often, the children ask to play together, they pull over a chair and make space  for each other and share. 

Morah Leah & Morah Kim

KDH Cooperative Painting

A class project: Foam painting a fall scene:

Working together, we painted an amazing fall scene.

Morahs Ruth, Sara and Gail

Extended Day Delights

Every Friday our school gets delivered boxes and boxes of pizza. Every Friday those pizza boxes get sent to recycling and our wonderful garbage removal team kindly take them to the recycling facility.  Last Friday Morah Stephanie was able to save a few in hopes that the children would find something creative to do with them.  When we looked at them this Monday we suggested many different options for the boxes.  Shaya insisted that we make a ramp.  So, with a little bit of tape and a lot of imagination we had the perfect ingredients for a marble-racing ramp.  We built a straight shoot at first then added little obstacles for the balls to go around.  Once we figured out that the obstacles were only slowing down the balls, we went back to our high speed racing and carried the activity on to Tuesday.  We love it when we find activities that have the children asking for more. 

While some were racing, others were building onto our cardboard house, twisting pipe cleaners together to make bracelets, and creating magic flower gardens out of random, flower-like toys. Last week Henia made a computer for our cardboard house, and then it went missing.  This week something great happened; we found it!  Here you can see Sammy Typing away busily

Our little builders once again created another unique structure equipped with an array of features.  Did you know that there's a spaceship out there that has an obstacle course, a house with beds, ramps, bridges, and a secret room? Yep, our students imagined all of that up themselves. 

While some like to build giant structures, others may feel more inclined to color, cut, tear, and glue. So, we turned our reading nook into an art station because sometimes it's fun to do art somewhere other than the table, as long as everyone is safe and mindful of the supplies we are using.  

Togetherness and fun go hand in hand during our extended hours. The concept of teamwork is a great social skill and will be carried with our young minds throughout their lives.  We practiced working together and cheering on our teammates using balloons, hoops, bean bags and some very simple instructions.  We were pleasantly surprised how well the children remembered the sequence of the races so well.  For example, during one race, we picked up bean bags, set each one in its own hoop, then did five jumping jacks, retrieved our bean bags then finished on our starting dot.  They all did a great job remembering all of those steps; very few needed the Morahs to remind them of the steps or walk them through.

Pesach Comes Alive in KDH

Pesach Comes Alive in KDH

             

                      Enjoy these videos. Two were spontaneous, "Baby Moshe" was totally 

planned and produced by the children.

"Bang Bang Bang. Bang Your Hammer..."

"Oh Listen, Oh Listen, Oh Listen King Pharaoh..."

"Where is baby Moshe..."

KDH Keeps Building Bridges

KDH continues to love building, especially bridges. They also are very busy using all the recyclables to create satellites, rocket ships, boats, cars, etc. Morah Sara and I decided to combine both these interests and present them with a challenge.

One morning, we set up a collection of recyclables: toilet paper rolls, squeezy apple sauce caps, cardboard, and wood chips, together with paint stirrers, popsicle sticks, yarn and colored tape. We asked the children if they could build a bridge together using these materials. Well...

In a word: WOW!!

The children set out to work and built a large circuitous bridge, traveling over train tracks, with many ramps to enter and exit at different places. There was also a boat bridge and a bridge under a waterfall. We took the bridge (carefully) off the table that they had built it on and placed it on top of a very large long box.

I brought in microcars and trucks and the children enjoyed traveling along their amazing bridge!

Morah Ruth

Morah Sara