Delightful Surprises . . .Literature Leads to Art, to Science and More . . .

     Walking around the Intown Jewish Preschool neighborhood  leads to delightful surprises.   It's interesting to notice the Craftsman-style homes, the old-tree growth and some cobblestone-paved streets. One additional treat is the book-boxes in front of so many homes.  It's fun to stop and investigate.  Often, there are some great children's books inside!  

     One day, a copy of It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw was in the box across the street our school.  Bonus!  It's a contemporary classic--perfect to introduce to Kitah Gimmel.

     So, we shared the book.  Then we used little pillow shapes to reinforce and retell the story during Morning Arrival ((above, with Maddy and Anslee.)

     We used our scissors and paper to create some ambiguous shapes. (Natalie cuts her shape. Annika does some serious multi-tasking, taking a call while keeping an eye on her friend.)

Anslee tells us about her shape.

Caleb cuts his paper.

Annabelle and Evan prepare their shapes.

Lily smiles as she cuts. (Below, Sammy, Yannai, Becker and Yinon create their designs.)

Finally, we were done!

What did we make?  A penguin, bowls, a knife, one kiddush cup . . .and so much more.

We could identify all our classmates' work!

Then we used paint and construction paper to get similar, yet different, results as our cut-up paper artwork.  (Ezra and Annika use the pipettes and paint to create symmetrical designs.) This time, we noticed the designs were "symmetrical."  The Kitah Gimmelniks called this, "Matchy-Matchy."  Yes indeed, both sides did match!  "Symmetrical" is now a new vocabulary word for the Kitah Gimmelniks. 

             

Want to try this at home?  Here's a pic of our book, the first copyright, 1947.  Yep, a real classic!  (And, p.s. stay tuned . . .noticing and identifying different cloud shapes is up next, another natural extension of the book . . .)

Morah Susan, Morah India and the Yeledim of Kitah Gimmel