KDH forming relationships with Portland Pen Pals

Portland Pen Pals

KDH received an exciting package from the Gan School in Portland, Oregon.  Before we even opened the package the children wanted to know where Portland is on the map. Some children shared that they had been to Portland. One child said her safta lives there and teaches at a school. Another said he knows Oregon because his cousin Mendel who lives in LA gave him a state card of Oregon. Another child shared he went to Portland twice. After using pushpins to mark Portland and Atlanta on our US map, we stretched a piece of yarn between the two cities to see how far our package traveled. This led to the question “How did the package come to us?” Some thoughts; “a truck”,  “17 airplanes actually 1”, "1 airplane", "it makes three sharp turns so it needs a rocket ship on top” (said while looking at the map) and “a truck and a plane to a truck to a plane.”

Looking at the distance from Portland to Atlanta

When we opened the package, we discovered a letter, notes, drawings, leaves and a bag of nature.  The notes and letters told us about the Pre-K class there, what they like to do at school, their ages and some of their birthdays. One of the children at the Gan School has a birthday on Pesach. When we heard this, KDH shared that they have siblings and relatives with birthdays on Pesach. This Pre-K class also asked KDH a question, "What do you like to do at school?"

KDH discussed what we can send to our new friends in Oregon. Some suggestions were “we can write notes”, “we can collect stuff for them outside”, “we can send pecans because they are yummy”, “we can write a note to tell them pecans are really good”, “we can tell them how to crack the pecans.", "I am really good at cracking them. We work as hard as we can to get the most things (out of a pecan)”, “we can put a box under the roof "(said while watching Mr. Kevin cleaning leaves off the roof), “we need to say our names because they said their names.”  

Finding Georgia nature treasures for our Pen Pals

Collecting leaves

Our friends in Portland need a lot of leaves

Nature Collectors

The class collected nature from our playground including pecans, pebbles, leaves, and rosemary to send to the kids in Portland. Next, the children drew pictures of the rosemary, a guy holding a bunny puppet on the school bus, a castle, and a bike in a shed because everyone in our school in Atlanta likes to ride bikes. The children also wrote words to send. One child dictated the word rosemary while another child wrote it. Another child wrote, “the most impossible word -HNYO”.  A child who enjoys cutting paper with scissors answered the question we were asked by cutting paper with fancy scissors to send. While painting with dreidels, we thought about what our friends in Portland do for Hanukkah. One child said, "most places in Oregon have apartments so they share menorahs. There are not a lot of dreidels. They share dreidels and apartments are so close to each other.” Another child suggested, "we should roll this (the dreidel painting) up and send it to them." We asked our Pen Pals how they celebrate Hanukkah in the letter we sent to them.

Creating original artwork to mail to Oregon

Drawing a rainbow to mail

Painting with dreidels for our new penpals

Let's roll this up and send it to Oregon

Before sending our package to our Pen Pals, the children observed, “we need to take off the rectangles they put on so it doesn’t get mixed up” The rectangles being the address labels we read to figure out where the package came from and what city we are in. We are wondering how long it will take for our package to travel back to the Gan School. Some guesses are: ”a day”,  “200 thousand minutes”, “10 nights”, “180 minutes”,  “200 miles”, “6 months because there are 6 states to Oregon”, “4 months”, “1 million seconds”, “a billion seconds”, “20 hundred miles and 20 planes”. 

We should send them rosemary!

Picking rosemary lollipops to send

Dictating  and writing the word rosemary
to go with the rosemary we  picked