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.

KDH LITTLE MINDS THINKING BIG! AN EXPLORATION OF THE EARTHWORM

We invited BIG THINKERS to come teach us about science. 

Everything in our world has a bit of science in it, so the more we know about science the better we understand what's around us. Since we are exploring nature, we thought what better to learn about then a very important creature around us every day: The Earthworm!

Yeah we know what an earthworm looks like, but what would it be like to actually get to see these guys up close and personal? We all anticipated what we were about to see!

 At first, these worms looked pretty normal, just crawling around in the dirt. Once we started to look a little closer with our lab equipment, we saw a whole other world.

 Some of us got really familiar with these decomposer creatures. And now we know what a decomposer is, its an animal or plant that breaks down stuff in the ground to give back nutrients to the soil!

  It was really neat holding the worms, and counting the rings on their bodies, and seeing which ones were the longest.

 The worms would crawl into the light of the flashlight, they were going towards the heat it made!

 These guys have a very interesting life getting to crawl and explore all around are gardens and playgrounds making the soil full of things that the flowers, plants, and trees love and need to grow. Thanks Earthworms, you make our world even more beautiful!

Kitah Gimmel Moon Lesson

The Night Sky Unit:  Week 6

This week Kitah Gimmel learned about the things we see in the night sky.  As we studied creation this week, the children discovered that Ha'Shem created night and day.  Therefore, we focused on the night sky, because the night sky holds many mysteries to discover!  We discussed what children know about the moon.  Becker told the class, "The ones that are half (referring to the moon) are called crescents."  I then asked, "Why does the moon change it's shape?"  Students replied in the following ways.  Lily said, "Because of the planet."  Yannai said, "It gets bigger, bigger, and bigger.  It moves."  Evan said, "And we are spinning so slow we can''t even see it."  Annabelle wore a shirt with a peace sign on it and Lily came up to her and said, "It's a moon!".

We read a book called, The Moon Seems to Change, and talked about how we live on the planet earth, which has 1 moon.  Lily mentioned, "I don't see the earth because I'm in it!"  We discussed how the earth spins so slowly that we can't see it spinning.  I asked Caleb to stand up and pretend to be the earth and Lily as the moon.  I spun Caleb around and asked him if at some point he could only see part of Lily.  I told the children that it is why some nights we only see part of the moon, for example, a crescent moon or half moon.  Later that day, we made moon rocks by combining baking soda, food coloring, glitter and water.  The children had fun playing with the squishy, sparkly moon sand!

Preschool Rocks!

Sometimes rocks can be a little intimidating. They're hard, dirty, and they could easily hurt someone if thrown. But when we look beyond those minor bumps, we see a world of opportunity for learning and creating. We can dig them up, paint them, create shapes and symbols, and the students can dream up all sorts of games to play using just rocks!  Some rocks can go home with the children, others will stay for the entire school to enjoy.  Rocks are fun, stay tuned to all of our fun rock updates!

Here we have a rock wash.  The children are using sponges and strainers to filter out the rocks and clean them up for our activities to come. 

Painting rocks for the playground is an activity everyone enjoys.  What's even more exciting is finding that rock you painted under a pile of wood chips!

Pick up rocks, similar to pick-up-sticks, without disturbing any rock other than the one you choose! This keeps everyone involved, watching to see if the pile moves or not.  Some kept count the entire time while others immediately started creating designs with their rocks. 

Pearl made a key!

"S" is for Sammy.

Brother and sister made a smiley face :)

Our rock train is TEN students long! 

This is Rock, he's our friend!! He has googly eyes and silly yarn for hair!  

KDH Science ALIVE: Watching our Garden Grow

Encouraging our natural observation abilities, our class enjoy learning about animals in their natural habitat while having loads of fun.

Daily we observe our playground garden, discovering new insects and seeing how the plants change and grow.

By drawing what we see in our science notebook, we know exactly how the garden and plants are changing from week to week.

We Take measurements of our plants height and the size of the leaves so we know how much the plants grow each week.

KDH is getting really good at measuring things.

On Wednesday it rained so much, and we recorded 4 inches of water in one day!