Self Portraits KDH

Look at this month's self portraits.

The photos of the children were placed in plastic sheet protectors.

Using sharpies the children traced an outline of their face, hair, eyes, nose and mouth. Then the photo was taken out of the sheet protector.  A blue piece of paper replaced the photo. 

The children are excited and surprised at the amazing work they produce. We are excited but definitely not surprised!!

Morah Ruth

We can do it!

So much of our Passover preps were done, on our own, not by ourselves, we surely had plenty of company and camaraderie.  The children are so competent and capable so they can get so much done using their own skills.  A sampling from our class Model Seder done before Passover;  

Cutting parsley that our class planted and watered. 

Peeling the Marror.

Peeling apples for the Charoset.

Washing the vegetables for the Karpas.

Setting the table.

Even squishing and pressing to make our own grape-juice! 

Shredding the apples for the charoset! 

Satisfaction guaranteed! 

Kitah Alef Cleaners

Cleaning is our new favorite activity! Washing dishes, walls and floors.  Now that the weather is beautiful, we can spend more time outside exploring with water and paint.   This is a most practical skill, it builds muscles, allows us to pay attention to detail and of course makes our Mommy's life easier! (or does it?)

Sensory Sand Slime (Say that fast 10 times!)

Sticky, slippery, gooey, heavy, bumpy...that's what sensory experiences are made of.  Did you know that learning and retention improve depending upon how many of our senses are engaged?

What would be more fun then super stretching sand? Here is another fun way we played with sand in our class:

Sand Slime Recipe

• 2 bottles of school glue (any kind will work)
• Play Sand (Traditional or colored works great)
• 1 cup of liquid starch

Firstly, checking it out...

Warming it up by touching and stretching it...

A little more stretching and shaping...

And now with a friend's help...

And then so many friends, stretching, pulling and shaping, almost across the whole classroom!  

KB Pesach Preparations and Hagadahs

In Kitah Bet we are preparing for Pesach in many ways.
We have cleaned our toys and classroom, we have learned lots of pesach songs including Mah Nishtana. We baked Matzah at the visiting Matzah Bakery, we have been mixing cement, building pyramids, taking care of Baby Moshe and lots more.
We put together a beautiful number Hagaddah which is coming home for Pesach, Please enjoy looking through it and talking about it with your child.

Here are some of the big ideas we have talking about together at school:

• Slavery vs Freedom:
  King Paroh wanted big cities so he made the Jews become his slaves. A slave is when someone is forced to do the work and not given any choice in the matter. The Jewish people had to build big cities for Paroh, no questions asked! Even if they didn’t want to. How the Jews feel?  The Jewish people were so tired. Their bodies were hurting them and they were so sad.
  
  Hashem loves us and takes care of us just like a parent and when he saw how sad and tired the Jews were Hashem said, “I want to give the Jewish people the Torah. In the Torah they will learn how to do to good things.  They will learn all about the mitzvot.  They need to be free so that I can give them the Torah which they can follow.”
  And so Hashem told Moshe to go tell Paroh that it was time to let the Jewish people go. At first he didnt listen, he was stubborn, but then he let the Jews go free.

• Baby Moshe
  We reenacted the story of Baby Moshe in the Nile River, with his sister Miriam watching him and the princess Batya finding him

• Matzah
  When it was time to leave Egypt, Moshe said: “We are so excited to leave. Let’s rush. Quickly, quickly, quickly. Besides, we don’t want King Pharaoh to change his mind. We need food to eat on our travels. What kind of food can we make that takes only a short while to prepare? Let’s make Matzah.”
  The Jewish people took a bowl and quickly poured flour and water into it. They kneaded the dough and shaped it into a flat, round circle. But, instead of putting it into the oven to bake, since they are in such a rush, they put the matzah circles on their backs where the hot sun will bake it. 

• The Seder:
  We have a Seder meal together with our family. We set the table just like we do for Shabbat and other holidays– candles, Kiddush, festive clothing, tablecloth, etc. But instead of Challah bread, we eat Matzah.
  Other items at the Seder:  the seder plate, the 4 cups of wine/grape juice to celebrate that we are free, the cup of Eliyahu, charoset to remind us about the cement the Jews used to build the cities, maror to remind us that it was hard to be a slave.

Some pictures of us working on our Hagadahs.

Morah Leah

A Model Seder in Kitah Bet

The table is set

The Seder plate is almost set but it is missing Charoset

We grate the apples, add some nuts and pour in some grape juice

Our charoset!

Now the Seder plate is all ready

We drink 4 cups (sips) of grate juice. We taste Matzah. 

We sing Mah Nishtana and other Pesach songs.

We dip Maror (Romaine lettuce) into the Charoset

We're brave enough to taste it.

We'll pass on tasting the horse radish, but we did all smell it.

Happy Pesach!

Morah Leah

KB Visits the Matzah Bakery

In Kitah Bet, we have been singing songs about Matzah, rolling matzah out of play-doh and tasting real Matah at snack. 

Actually baking our own Matzah at the visiting Matzah bakery made the whole experience truly experiential. We heard the story of Pesach from "King Paroh" and then mixed our own dough. Reyn poured the flour into a bowl, Freeda added the water. The dough was then mixed as quickly as possible. Kosher for Pesach matzah needs to be made from start to finish within 18 minutes. This ensure it does not begin to rise and become leavened. The children received a piece to dough to roll, poke and then it was baked. 

What an exciting hands on experience. 

Morah Leah

Rockets and airplanes in KDH

KDH has a tray of recyclables in our art center. You will find paper towel rolls, pieces of cardboard, paper string and other things that are added from time to time. April 22nd is Earth Day, a good time to raise the awareness of how much fun recycling can be. Look at the interesting rockets and airplanes that KDH children created while recycling. We were so impressed with the children's creativity.
Of course, the colored tape helps make it even more fun.

Pesach and Self Portraits in KDH

Creating connections is a large part of the learning process. In KDH we create connections with each other and create connections from previous experiences to  new ones. One connection is social and the other cognitive in nature. Both support learning and remembering.
We read in the Haggadah, "In every generation, each person should visualize himself, leaving Egypt." Each month the children draw a self portrait. We try to vary the media to give the children as many experiences as possible. Sometimes the materials used relate to what we are working on in other areas. Legumes were used close to the Parsha where Yaakov made lentil soup. Last month we were making city prints. We liked that so much, we made our self portraits with prints.
Last week, as we were preparing ourselves for Pesach and making our KDH haggadah, the children drew a self portrait leaving Egypt together with all our Jewish brethren. They drew the boiling hot sun beating down in the desert, desert sand or water from the Red Sea and finally many of them were holding their matzah as they made their way of out Egypt!
We hope this will raise our consciousness of our connection to generations of the Jewish people.

Haggadah Making in Kitah Daled Hey

At IJP, the children are active participants rather than spectators. Your children did not just “model” for the photographs. They went through the entire process of Pesach preparation

from cleaning through singing “Next Year in Jerusalem.”

The process began after Purim. The children cleaned chametz(crumbs from bread or anything not kosher for Passover) from our class room and put up signs in the dramatic play area indicating that it was a chametz free zone. We discussed the differences between matzah and chametz.

The children began making their haggadah with sweeping  up the “chametz” with a mini sweeper in paint.  We pressed with grape skins for a purple background, printed lettuce, made paint with sand for the hard labor the Jews went through in Egypt we also painted matzah with bubble wrap,  and painted and cut out baby Moses and his water.