We Are Thankful . . .Every Day, and Thanksgiving Day

      What do we know about Thanksgiving?   We know that we are thankful, and we say this every day in our Tefillah.  We also know our American history . . . and that the Thanksgiving  holiday celebrates the first Thanksgiving so long ago.

Spontaneously reenacting the First Thanksgiving on our playground.  Morah Sterny asks, "Boys, where are you going?"  Rami has his hands on the wheel while Yoni responds, "We're going to America!"

We are Thankful for . . .
We made a list of everything we are thankful for. . . 

Rami:  my house.

Shaya:  hugs with my brothers.

Reed:  my sister Ansley, and brushing her teeth.

Ruthie:  Mommy.

Yoni:  my kitty-cat.

Noa:  my neighbor's dog.

Pearl:  my parents.

Mortimer:  my Lego set.

Izzy:  Mommy and Daddy.

Ari S:  Ima and G'ma, Safta, Amber, Amanda, Lev (he's almost big!) and Aba!

Hannah:  Aba.

Ari E:  the hugs I give to Ziva and Albee.

Leiba:  a trip to Disney World.

Shlomit:  Mickey Mouse.

Sam:  food on the table.

Levi:  the food in my house

Henia:  my Aba and my Ima and my kitty. 

     We shared a few stories about Thanksgiving.  One of our favorites was about Squanto, the American Native who taught the Pilgrims how to plant and fish.

 

We are watching our variegated corn cob experiment.  What will happen next?  We will wait . . . 

    









     We learned about the importance of corn to the American Natives.  We tried our hand at baking corn bread.  The result was tasty!

Our delicious, nutritious yummy-in-the-tummy recipe for corn bread: 

1/4 cup corn meal
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease 8 or 9 inch round pan.  Blend all dry ingredients, stir in remaining ingredients.  Pour batter into greased pan and bake 20 to 25 minutes.  And if you're expecting 100 guests for company, as we did for our recent IJP Thanksgiving lunch, simply multiply the above ingredients by 10, and you're ready to go:)

     We also tried writing and drawing with a feather quill.  Did people in the "old days" have iPads?  Definitely not. We dipped our quills in black paint and went to work.  Morah Susan told us that the Pilgrims squeezed berries and used that as their "ink."  To demonstrate, she squeezed a cranberry to show us the juice.  It was very juicy and red; it squished on her shirt, so we know it is a lot like ink!  (Pictures below:  writing and drawing with our quills and "ink.")

     

(Above, We take turns sweeping our floor with an old-timey broom.  A Pilgrim's work is never done!)

Some of us practiced building houses using our wooden logs.  It wasn't all that easy.  Imagine the life of a Pilgrim!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love, Morah Susan, Morah Sterny and Kitah Gimmel

Kitah Gimmel's Dancing Feet

Music Moves Us 

     What do you do when you hear a stirring piece of music?  Do you sit quietly and focused, at the edge of your seat, listening and watching intently?  We do!  Or do you want to get up and dance?  We want to do that, too!

     Kitah Gimmel was entertained by Mortimer's dad recently.  He brought along his accordion and played for us.  At first, we sat quietly in our Big Library, taking it all in.  After we heard a song or two, we were ready to get up and dance, to join in and experience the simcha of it all.

     We had plenty of  time to listen, dance--and rest for a few minutes.  Then, Mortimer's dad showed us how the accordion worked.  It was fascinating.

     For most of us, this was the first time experiencing this instrument up close.  We looked inside it,and some of us touched it.  The accordion looks a little like a piano, works a little bit like a bagpipe.  All we know is--it was fun!

Great Times in Kitah Gimmel,

Enjoying the fun,

Morah Susan and Morah Sterny

KDH's Outdoor Classroom

The beautiful sunny day yesterday beckoned us outside. Not wanting to waste a precious moment of outdoor time, we all agreed to have our snack outdoors. Our plan was to eat on the stage on the bottom level. But once outside, we saw that the stage was still too wet to sit on. We walked up two levels and enjoyed our snack there. 

As we would say in the vernacular, "What mazel!" We were lucky to have gone up there.

Reyn found a lady bug. 

Lewis discovered an inch worm. What fun to watch how it arches its body to move.

And then, the pecans! Lots of pecans. We've seen pecans since the beginning of the school year. They were still in the outer husks and mostly black and rotten.

Yesterday the children found pecans just in the shell. They cracked them open and tasted them. What a pleasant surprise. 

They continued collecting them. Morah Sara went inside on got us a basket. 

We took the pecans and went down to the (now dry) stage. We lined up the pecans in rows of ten. We had 17 sets of pecans with ten in each set. The children counted by ten, obviously up to 170. 

What a fine day! We took the pecans inside and are thinking about what we can do with them.

Suggestions anyone?

Morah Ruth   Morah Sara

Music In Pre-KA

In Pre-KA we love music,
We started off the year with Morah Adina coming in once a week for 15 minutes. The children learned to sit and participate, play with instruments and even clap and dance along.
Recently we felt that they were ready for a longer session. This week Morah Adina did a 30 minute class with us, The children loved it! They involved and engaged for the longer session.
Its always hard to say Shalom to Morah Adina, but its only until next week.

Morah Leah

KDH Outdoor Fun with Math

This week's Parsha speaks about Yaakov and Eisav, twin brothers. Yes, twins, but very different, actually opposites. We listened to Morah Sara Carter's CD and sang along:

Yaakov and Eisav, 

Twins but Opposites.

Yaakov learned the Torah

Eisav ran away from it. 

The song goes on with a list of opposites, an important language concept. KDH children made a list too: hot and cold, big and small, fast and slow, up and down, inside and outside.... 

Twins are a pair, a math concept that we talk about. We also count by two's. KDH children love to count. We are always looking for ways to count and strengthen our math skills. Imagine our delight today as we watched and listened the children play outside.

They were playing Mr. Fox together, counting and running. After they stopped to catch their breath, they continued to count. 

At last count they were already in the 70's.
Keep on going, yeladim.  It's fantastic!

Morah Ruth and Morah Sara

Kitah Bet and Pumpkins!

Fall time means cooler weather, rainbow leaves, and pumpkin season! We've been incorporating pumpkins and gourds into our sensory table and drama area up until now, and we decided it was time to take our exploration of these fall vegetables to the next level. By now we've familiarized ourselves with the smooth outsides of the pumpkins and bumpy feel of the gourds, but we wondered, what's inside?

Morah Rena cut a pumpkin open first. We made guesses as to what we thought might be inside.

Evan - "Leaves."
Caleb - "Seeds."

Sammy - "Orange."

Annabelle - Pumpkins."

Becker - "Orange."

Lily - "Seeds."

Whoever guessed "seeds" guessed right! And "orange" too, though the seeds were white. We passed the pumpkin and gourd pieces around for a closer look.

The cut pieces were placed on display with a magnifying glass for further independent exploration. The children could examine all parts of the items with their hands, eyes and noses.

While talking about the seeds during snack, Evan suggested, "Let's plant them!" We thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if we planted pumpkin seeds in a pumpkin itself! We scooped out the insides of the pumpkin and then took turns filling the cavity with soil.

Morah Rena placed a few seeds into the soil, and every day we'll chart our pumpkin plant's progress.

Kitah Alef Explores Colors

 In Kitah Alef we have been exploring all kinds of colors. Morah Myriam filled some zip lock bags with paint. We filled one with yellow and white paint, one with white and silver, and one with blue and white paint.

 Our friends helped tape the bags onto the wall. Once the bags were in place the children were able to touch and squeeze the paint inside the bags. We watched as the paints got all mixed up.

Morah Myriam pointed to the yellow paint: "Yellow!" Zoey and Sylvia repeated: "Yellow!" and so on with every color.

 The yellow paint turned a lighter, brighter yellow as the paint was pushed all around inside the bag, as did the blue paint. The silver inside the white paint slowly disappeared.

 Everyone had a chance to touch, squeeze, and push the paint around.

 Logan went from bag to bag squeezing and pushing each one. What is next on the menu: Red!