We Love Our Playground!

No addition was unnoticed on our newly renovated playground this week.  The students took the afternoon Morahs around showing all of the exciting new features added to their already amazing outdoor learning area.  Some were fans of the flowers while others loved the bigger outdoor kitchen.  We had a great time exploring what felt like a brand new space and took full advantage of new learning experiences. 

"Look! We are a family making dinner together!"

"We can wash our hands and water the flowers at the same time!"

"Let's take turns picking up the rocks.  If you move one, you have to put it back then it's the next person's turn." After all of the rocks were taken from the pile, the students counted them then made their favorite shape! 

"We collected all of the rocks, now we're going to hide them in our wood building." 

Planting and Digging with Kitah Alef

 Last week and this week Morah brought sand with lima beans and sticks into the classroom. We went digging for the lima beans in the sand. Sylvia collected a few in her hands.

 We decided to plant the lima beans in little cups filled with dirt. Each child received a cup with his/her name on it and planted three lima beans in the soil.

                        Morah Myriam: "Did you plant a bean?" Sylvia: "Yes, I planted one!"

 Zoey carefully pushed her lima beans into the soil one by one. Each child had a turn planting.

                                                   Yisroel: "I planted it, I planted it!"

         After everyone was finished planting the beans, we placed them on the window sill.

 Morah Myriam: "Will it grow? What will it be?" Sylvia: (pointing to the window) "Yes! A Tree!"

                                         We can't wait to see what happens next!

           (Sing to tune of London Bridge)

            Plant a seed and water it,

water it, water it

Plant a seed and water it

Then we'll watch it grow   

Make sure that its in the sun

in the sun, in the sun

Make sure that its in the sun

Then we'll watch it grow!

                                        

What is Growing in KDH?

Kitah Daled children made beautiful mosaics with all kinds of legumes before Thanksgiving break.

What do we know about legumes? They grow in a pod. We have some in our growing in our garden. Peas!

How can we get them to germinate?

We wrapped some navy, kidney and black beans in wet paper towels. We put them in ziploc bags and left them in our classroom over the Thanksgiving break.

Look what we found when we came back!

Every day they grow more. We took out two of them out of their small ziploc bags, today. One we put into a plastic juice bottle that was in our recyclables. We are hoping it will be like a greenhouse. Another one we put into a large ziploc bag and taped it up again onto the window.

How much will be they grow?? Will we eventually have beans?

We also took out the Indian corn from our Fall tray. Could we get the corn to germinate? We put the corn into an inch of water. It had already grown roots and short stems when we came back to school on Monday.

It keeps growing and growing. It makes us think of a centipede. 

Come and look at it.

And finally, we have started harvesting our carrots. We picked a red carrot and peeled it. It was a little disappointing that it was orange inside, like typical carrots. But, we were not disappointed by its sweet taste.

Sweet carrots grown by sweet children!

Morah Ruth and Morah Sarah

The KDH Garden

KDH began the spring planting before Pesach break. The children have been watering the plants and watching and waiting patiently. This week we harvested peas. Kitah Bet is also very excited about our produce and we share it with them.

 Amitai is picking the peas

 Josie and Adaya find some peas too.

 Peas

 Josie holding the peas for the class. 

 Our tomatoes.

Check out what the onions we planted are doing. It looks like its sprouting a flower.

Our beans will be ready soon too.

We have garlic and cucumbers growing too! It's all very exciting!! What a great way to end the year.

Morah Ruth

A tree grows in Kitah Bet

In honor of Tu Bshvat we "planted" our Mitvah Tree on the wall.

  The trunk

The leaves

The birds

Our tree

Now we are going to fill it up with Mitzvahs. Please help us by sending in Mitzvah Notes.

Morah Leah

Connections

The way we acquire and retain knowledge is by connecting  the new information to what we already know. The teachers' job is to figure out how to connect the new idea to the information that the children already have mastered. This is the natural process of learning. The more connections that teachers help the children make the more it becomes a habit. Children begin looking for connections themselves. We also connect literacy, science, art, holidays, and music with each other.
Sometimes we work to make the connections and sometimes we just get lucky.  Morah Gail brought in two Rosh Hashana books this morning that she took out of the library over the weekend. I brought in soil and seeds for planting. At circle time Morah Gail read the book, Talia and the Rude Vegetables , by Linda Elovitz Marshall. The story is about a girl Talia who goes to gather from the garden what she thinks her grandmother has asked for, that is rude vegetables. Her grandmother wants to make a stew for Rosh Hashana. Talia gathers ornery onions, crooked carrots, garish garlic and more. She also puts aside vegetables and gives them to the rabbi for families in need. The book gave us some good laughs and provided thought about helping others. But what are root vegetables? Out to the garden we went. We dug up the leftover parsley root and potatoes and prepared the soil for planting beets, carrots and radishes.

Connections: Literacy, Rosh Hashana, doing mitzvot, root vegetables and gardening. And of course, enjoying it all!

Morah Ruth

Potato and Carrot Math

On Friday morning the KDH children were ready to cut up and roast the potatoes for Shabbat party that we had dug up from our garden earlier in the week. Then, what a fantastic surprise! Dovi brought in a HUGE carrot that his father found in the Farmers' Market. We quickly got two typically sized carrots (thank you Morah Leah) and added that to our vegetables. We put out a balance scale, tape measure, and magnifying glass and were ready to compare and contrast the different sized potatoes and carrots.

Look at what the children did. They measured the length and circumference of the carrots and the potatoes.They counted the potatoes. We had 13! Our best potato harvest yet. Then they lined up the potatoes from largest to smallest. Comparing the size and weight of some of the potatoes was not obvious. The children put them on the balance scale and looked to see which side of the scale dipped. 

Dovi and Jonah noticed that the carrot had lines going around it. They looked at it carefully under the magnifying glass. "Why does it have lines," they asked. We will explore that further and keep you posted.

Finally, we roasted the potatoes and enjoyed both the carrots and potatoes at Shabbat party.

Morah Ruth