Mazal Tov to The Weiner Family

It is so beautiful to see how the children want to celebrate and be happy with Dovi. Observe how interested the children are in the picture that Dovi brought to class,  of him visiting his new baby Ezra in the hospital! 

Learning From Eachother

Everyday the children are growing and learning new things.

After lunch Sholom  showed Felix how he knows how walk on his heels ,Felix said "I can do it too"

Then some of the other children started to follow them .

So that gave us the idea to put tape on the floor, as tracks for the children to walk on, balance and form a fun line or train...endless possibilities.

they are so happy to show each other or the teacher how they walk,crawl, hop on the line!

Challah Baking

Lovely to bake challah with little people. Almost everyone joined in helping Morah Dena form the dough for the dinner at her house, but these children kept asking for "more dough please", "if you use flour it's not so sticky" "look at this awesome challah I made", and Jonah knew that what was in the bowl was "dough", not challah (yet)...as most the children suggested

Preparing for Chanukah in KDH

KDH is excitedly preparing for Chanukah. Comparing the Menorah that was lit in the Beit Hamikdash and what we use today is just one teensy aspect of our exploring. And, how many different kinds of Menorahs/Chanukiot can we make? Nessia took plastic straws and made a Menorah with seven branches like the one in the Beit Hamikdash. Mendel S.  built a menorah using wooden blocks with help from his friends. Legos, pipe cleaners, color tiles, and more will be used in the coming days to create chanukiot. ….

Chanukah science elicits surprises. Which is heavier – oil or water? We thought about that and began our experiment. Put equal amount s of water into cups and compare them in our balance scale. The water tipped the scale. Wow! Now we understand why when we make salad dressing the oil floats on top of the water. Now, fill a glass with water. Drop in blue food coloring and watch it slowly diffuse. The designs are riveting. Pour oil into the glass. It’s floating on top of the water.Slowly, pour salt into the oil. It drops down with some oil to the bottom of the glass. Ooh, what’s happening now? There are bubbles of oil that are floating back up to the top of the glass while the salt stays on the bottom. We made our own lava light!

By Morah Ruth - KDH 

November Self Portraits

Have you seen the November self portraits in our cubby room? The children used legumes - beans, peas and lentils to create their masterpieces. We added rice for other options. Why legumes? Yaakov prepared a red lentil soup for Yitzchak after Avraham passed away. Eisav sold his first born birthright to Yaakov for the pot of soup. (Parshat Toldot). Notice the details that the children so carefully placed on their self portraits. Can you find the one with the green Kippah? How about not just an outline but a face made with rice. Do you see the black eyed peas used to make eyes? Do yellow peas depict blonde hair? November is coming to an end. Please come and admire. 

Morah Ruth - KDH

November to Remember

Check out this video of our class!!

Make Your Own Playdough!

Where does playdough come from? While it's often waiting for us on trays when arrive to school each day, today we saw and experienced what it takes to create this exciting material.

Morah Kim shows how to measure the salt

As we describe and measure each ingredient, the kids wait patiently to dump the ingredients into the bowl, and mix it all up.

When the dough was ready, each of us got a tray with a ball of fresh playdough to squoosh, pat, and pull.

Freeda feels the sticky dough

We can make imprints by pressing in natural elements, like leaves.

The No-Cook Playdough Recipe:

1.5 C water
3 C flour
1.5 C salt
1/4 C oil
food coloring (optional)

Teacher Tip: To get a natural-toned playdough like that in the pictures, use black tea instead of plain water

Yaakov and Eisav - Twins But Opposites

A favorite song from Morah Sarah Carter's CD, a chant that the children love to sing. After singing, we continue our Parsha discussion. What are some opposites that KDH thought of? Big and small, day and night, cold and warm, smooth and rough and the list goes on. We also play an opposite matching game with many many more....

Every week we try to prepare a Shabbat party snack that relates to the Parsha. Benjamin suggested we make a lentil soup like Yaakov cooked. But, we are the soup chefs for the grandparents feast. Mendel S. thought smoothies would be a great snack. The children suggested we make them with strawberries, bananas and mango. Yum! Morah Ruth presented a challenge. Explain how soup and smoothies are opposites and then we can have smoothies for shabbat party. After much discussion we found the answer! The soup is made from vegetables, the smoothie from fruit. What else? The soup is served hot and the smoothies, we like cold!

Looks like we might need to visit Trader Joe's once again...

By Morah Ruth - KDH

KDH's Trip to Fernbank

The morning arrived that Kitah Daled Hey had been looking forward to, our trip to the Fernbank Science Center and Planetarium. We buckled in and drove off.

Oops, we had our camera but the battery was being charged at IJP. What! No pictures!?  No problem. We would use our descriptive language and drawing abilities to make a book about the trip.

KDH sat down the next day and reminisced. Kira loved riding in the van with her friends and baby brother, Mickey. Einav wore a beautiful dress with her IJP Tshirt for the occasion. Esther, Benjamin and Einav thought the spinning pennies were exciting. Ari enjoyed seeing the snakes, which Mendel said were big. Kira, Nessia, AmaraLia commented on the show. We saw how the sun makes a day and night sky. Stars in the sky make shapes at night and of course the moon came out at night. Menny and Mendel were excited by the space ship, Apollo VI. We watched a video of its takeoff. AmaraLia and Benjamin liked the turtle. The children drew pictures and described what they drew.

We were sorry that our friends, Theo and Isaac missed the trip. Theo was in New York. He drew a picture of himself playing in a playground there. Isaac, unfortunately was sick. We loved his drawing of himself on the couch with a blanket, resting and were glad that he was feeling better.

We found pictures of Fernbank online and put it all together. Voila, our book!

By Morah Ruth - KDH

"Playball, Playball, ra ra ra!"

Our bi-weekly Playball sessions are a high-energy, super fun time. Coach Rob leads us in a series of activities that help us develop our gross/fine motor skills, and that involve items like bouncy balls, tennis balls, and hula hoops. Below is a moment from today's Playball:

And some pictures:

 

Hopping in the "choo choo train"

 

Capturing a moment of Environment or Materials being the third (or fourth) teacher,          

  "look Morah Estee i wrote my name all by myself"

Why is Painting so Valuable?

Children form many connections and ideas of how the painting process works 

for them, as well as what they enjoy about it.  Watch a child painting and you 

will see a fully engaged child. We can almost see children’s thoughts, such as, 

“When I push my brush flat, my line gets bigger”, 

or “I like stirring this, but I don’t want to put it on paper or touch it”,

 or “I mixed red with more red and orange, and got fire color red!”

 While we listen and observe, we may begin to understand the way a child perceives his world, his developmental abilities, and his needs or interests.

By Morah Estee

Little Mommies!

It's so interesting to observe children when they play house and pretend to be little mommies!

One of them exclaimed, "We're the kitcheners!"

 Estelle cooked and served her friends food.

                                    

Vivian bathed her babies.

                                               


Nina put her dolly down for a nap.

                                                    

Literacy-Based Fun

Books motivate and inspire, especially when followed by guided dialogue and an invitation to partake in engaging materials. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Extended Day activities are often preceded by books. Some we have used to spark our imaginations include Little Blue and Little Yellow, Where the Wild Things Are and The Giant Jam Sandwich. Most recently, we read It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw:

Check out a photo journal of our "Spilt Milk"-inspired dropper paintings:

Working together with Love and Respect

In our classroom each morning we sing about loving our fellow as we love our self   In Hebrew the tenet goes like this  " veahavta lereacha kamocha ". Being kind to each other and treating each other with respect- just as we would want to be treated.  When the children are able to play and learn in this environment  they  ultimately benefit in so many ways 

• confidence

• the ability to develop good relationships with peers

• concentrating on and persisting with challenging tasks

• attending and listening to instructions

• being able to solve social problems

• effectively communicate emotions

Here are some things that happened this week.

    Motty: "Morah Estee can you help find 7?"

   Sholom: "I can help you, I'll show you,  I really know."

   (then they sat and finished the game together with the morah's help too)

 Jonah, Asher and Luba played with the magna-tiles,they built a house. Then they formed the letter P and a flag,  when they finished they were so proud of their team work that they asked me to take a picture and they even "posed " for it !

Max and Felix wanted to read books together , here is how the reading to each other went:

max: "look Felix! this is a plane with a propeller "

Felix: "look here max! in this plane the propeller is hiding (pointing at a passengers jet)"

Enjoying small talk .Talia is telling Dovy about her new house while cooking food from play dough 

By Morah Estee

Voting at IJP

Did you see a KDH child with an I’m a Georgia Voter sticker? There were decisions and choices being made, and yes, voting going on in KDH. Did we vote for president? No! We left that to the parents. KDH children held primary elections yesterday regarding what snack we would have at our Shabbat Party this Friday.  The children suggested: challah, chocolate bits, ice cream, cantaloupe, lollipops and taffy. Since this week’s Parsha speaks about the mitzvah of Challah, we decided to bake Challah and eat it at the party. What about desert? We voted today – the choices were chocolate bits and ice cream. See the voting booth the children built. We counted our vote. Ice cream won 7 to 4.

By Morah Ruth - KDH