Keeping Healthy in Kitah Alef

When it's cold outside

do you curl up? Do you hide?

Do you sleep all winter long,

'til the birds burst out in song?

Do you gain a lot of weight,

and sleep very, very late?

Do you hibernate?!

(Tune of "Do your Ears Hang Low")

With the recent blast of cold weather, some of us might feel like hibernating - under our covers! We are grateful for the heat in our school building and our warm jackets and coats. The winter and all it brings with it provides opportunities to talk about important life skills. Even our little Kitah Alef-ers can learn healthy habits that prevent the spread of germs and illness! At circle time we've been practicing sneezing and coughing into our elbows as well as wiping our own noses with a tissue and putting it in the garbage.

We've also taken out our doctor set, complete with toddler-sized scrubs and doctor tools. This dramatic play area introduces new items and vocabulary and helps the children learn empathy as they care for their baby dolls. They feel empowered as they get to be the doctor instead of the patient this time!

Even the babies joined in!

Winter Experiments in KDH

Since the first snow of the season, which was actually before winter officially began, KDH has been talking about snow and ice. That Friday, we brought in some snow and experimented putting salt on it and watercolor paint.

 What do we use to melt ice on the road? Salt. Salt's freezing/melting point is lower than 32'F which is the temperature at which water freezes. We continued with different experiments melting blocks of  ice with salt, adding food coloring and watching.

We also lifted up an ice cube with string and salt.

Last week we set out two glasses filled with room temperature tap water. We added salt to one glass turning it into salt water. We brought out purple ice cubes that we had made earlier. The question we had was: If we put a purple ice cube into each glass, which glass of water would melt the ice cube faster - the plain tap water or the salt water? Everyone thought about it and created his/her own hypothesis.

What happened?

The ice cube in the tap water began to melt and the purple food coloring spread down making the water in that glass, purple. The ice cube in the salt water melted very slowly. The purple water that came from the melted ice cube in the salt water, stayed on top of the clear salt water. Why? Evan told us that happened because the salt water is heavier! As the first ice cube was almost all melted, Sammy suggested that we add another ice cube to each glass. We did that and then went outside. A half hour later, when we came in, we observed that the ice cube in the salt water had again not melted much and the purple layer on top had stayed on top and gotten a little bigger!

Why to do you think this happened? Evan's dad suggested that the salt actually helped make that ice and water colder. Think about how we make ice cream. We use salt and ice.

We left the glasses out until the next morning and the purple layer was still on top of the salt water. This reminded us of the density column that we had experimented with on Chanukah.

What do you think about all this??

We saved the glass of salt water and waited and watched. The first week it looked the same. Then we noticed that slowly over time the purple layer on top was going further down in the glass. We examined it and found that crystals were also forming inside the glass. Because this made us think of a snow globe, and we like using our flashlights, we set the glass down and put a small snowman behind it. Look at what happens when you look through a glass of water at an object. The light bends and we could see two snowmen even though there was only one.

We are continuing to watch what will happen to the purple coloring and salt water in the glass.
Winter, cold, ice, salt, light, crystals, solutions.... all add up to science fun in KDH.

The next day:

The purple is getting bigger.....

Morah Ruth

Morah Sara

Thinking with a Line in KDH

What can you do with a 2" x 3" piece of corrugated cardboard or old credit card and black paint? Cathy Topal created the concept of line printing, calling it, "thinking with a line" . Dip two sides of edges of the cardboard/card into the paint and you can make: 

vertical lines

horitzontal lines

diagonal lines 

radial lines and

smooshing - dragging the cardboard.

Check out thinkingwithaline.com if you are intrigued.

We set out the cardboard pieces and paint a few days after our return from winter break. The children were curious about it. Pearl printed fout vertical lines and then one horizontal line across them. That represented the number 5. Two of them and then she had 10.

Shaya looked at the materials and sat down and printed his name. Evan printed around his name. Natalie printed her name and a snowman.

Annika painted a sun. The next day she drew a tree swaying in the wind and a house with windows shaking.

Winter and storms became a common theme.
Yinon declared that he drew Wind. Yannai drew a tornado. Ezra's is a hurricane. Levi drew a triangle, took another piece of paper and painted a house in a blizzard, next he printed a kite blowing in the wind. Maddy's painting is icicles growing in the wind. Pearl drew a snow storm. Anslee drew wind.

Sammy drew a house shaking from the winter weather. You can feel the house shaking when you look at her print.

Becker drew a millipede next to a rocket ship that is flying off to the sun! Wait up Becker, we all want to come along for the ride! 

We put out old credit cards (thank you Felicia and Dena) and designed ties for the special guy in the children's lives. 

This is just the beginning! We hope to use this method to draw snowflakes, skeletons, trees and leaves. The possibilities are endless.

Morah Ruth

Morah Sara

Morah Gail