An Environment of Yes

Intown Jewish Preschool provides a blended montessori and reggio learning experience, allowing the children's learning to be self led and oh, so special. Through our tray exploration, children create stories in small worlds, build with loose parts, explore their senses, and show us a thing or two about what we've provided for them to play with, there really are no limits when independence meets creativity.

Yonah happily builds towers of all different colors!

Mina is counting and placing the candles on the Menorah!

Asher's putting the blue circle into the fence and is pretending it's water!

Leora is showing us many ways to stack the colorful floor puzzle.

Adom is busy working on the construction site. 

Sela is focusing on putting together ALL of the shape puzzles. 

Parker likes to filter the fine sand through his hands. 

Orli can make lines, hand prints, and piles of sand over the light table. 

Mason prefers on giant mound and he can see more light!

Gavi make straight lines and says he's a construction worker!

Liav is figuring out how to build and stack with wooden blocks and triangles. 

So many different trays, so many different opportunities!

Asher's birdie is trying to stand on the branch!

Lily figured out the green rock is round and fuzzy!

Erez is staking the magnetic shapes on top of each other to make a tall tower. 

Lev is wrapping baby Moshe up safely. 

Elliot is finding jewels in the desert sand. 

Kitah Bet's Luxurious Spa Day for the Special Ladies in Our Lives

What do Kitah Bet students love more than their mommies?! Doing special things for them, of course! We have had lotion as a feature of our goodbye circle the entire year. This lotion has a calming scent to it that comes in handy during the part of the day where children are transitioning into either nap or carpool.  The children have always been drawn to this ritual and never seem to miss an opportunity to remind us when we try to skip over it when we run out of time.  Let's face it, Morahs are human, too :) 

We took this as an opportunity to create something, the lotion, that the children connect to, and tied it into our Ladies' Day celebration.  As we thought, the children ate it up, figuratively, of course!

Here, we introduced the ingredients: Coconut oil, beeswax (from bees!), Almond oil, shea butter, and the essential oils cedar wood, lavender, and citrus.  

Almond oil, beeswax pellets, coconut oil, shea butter

Lily didn't mind so much!

Yonah wasn't so sure about touching the beeswax

Leora said, "The beeswax feels like tofu nuggets!"

See how we mix them all together!

Then our special guests came to our classroom! We had a dance party, sang, "Be My Friend," decorated the containers and gave hand massages led by Morah Yael.

KDH Light and shadows through the year

 Early on in the year, we noticed that the children were fascinated with and enjoyed using the flashlights that were in the science center.

The children shone the light on as many things in the room as possible.

Then, Morah Dena brought in the Velcro hair rollers. They were fun to build with but took on an added dimension when the children lined them up, brought over the flashlights and observed what would happen if  they put it in the first roller of the structure. How did light travel? Did it go straight through. How far could the light reach?

Then, we noticed the shadows on our curtains in the morning. We went outside. taking turns making shadows for the children inside.

Light and shadows in our classroom! How interesting!

Parshat Noach talks about the rainbow. Could we make rainbows in our classroom? Yes, with a prism. How many colors does white light divide into? 

Light and shadows - There is so much to do with them. ......

We brought in books about light and shadows.


What did we learn?
Light travels in a straight line. Could we bend it? Yes. Try putting a straw in a glass a water. It looks broken. Why?
Light bounces off of everything. It also reflects off of shiny surfaces like a mirror. We used mirrors to reflect light.

Shadows and light at Chanukah time.

We get light from the sun, candles, light bulbs, fish, fire....
We made cotton wicks to burn oil and made beeswax candles.

. Experiments: What does a flame need to burn? What gas extinguishes a flame?

Every Friday at Shabbat party Ima lit the Shabbat candles.
 TheShabbat candles bring peace and tranquility to our homes.  

A little bit of light pushes away a lot of darkness.

Drawing our entire body with the help of an overhead projector and a friend. It really is a shadow!

KDH celebrated Rosh Chodesh at the beginning of each month. There is a "new moon" or thin cresecent shaped moon then. The moon reflects the light of the sun. How much light is reflected by the moon determines its "size" or rather what it looks like to us. 

In the times of the Beit Hamikdash large fires were lit from mountain top to mountain top to spread the word that it was Rosh Chodesh.

More books about light and shadows.

More shadow art....

 The children worked cooperatively and made hand shadow art.  One child held the flashlight. The next child put his hand out. The third child traced the shadow of the hand. A fourth child colored it in!!

The flash lights continued to be of interest during center play.

 The dads built cardboard airplanes, cars, rocket ships for us to use. The flashlights were used as headlights and helped us see while we sat inside them!

At Purim time Kevin built us a shadow box theater. Using stick puppets, the children performed the Purim story! Fantastic puppeteers. Attentive audience!

Taking it a step farther, we pulled down the sheet we had hanging in the middle of the classroom. Could the children create shadows of the entire Haggadah?

Outside in the spring sunshine we notice our shadows!

On Lag BaOmer we made a campfire in Meron. Many years ago on Lag BaOmer the secrets of the Torah were revealed by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. The Torah secrets lit up the world! We light bonfires.

A Shadow Discussion:

Morah - Why can't you see a shadow early in the morning?

Levi - The sun isn't up yet.

Evan - You need some dark and some light.

Yannai - If you put one foot away the shadow will follow you. 

Morah - Can your shadow be attached to someone else's shadow?

Yannai - Yes, if you both lean over and your heads touch, your shadow heads will also touch.

Evan - If you shake hands.

Henia - You can hold hands.

Levi - You can hug someone,

Shaya - or give them a high-five

Maddy - When the light is on the wall, the closer you get to the light the bigger the shadow gets because the closer you are to the light the more light you're blocking.

Yannai - Your shadow will be opposite you. If you're high, it will be low.

Evan - Wherever you go your shadow follows you. 

Sammy - When you spin, your shadow spins with you.

Anslee - I stand with the sun facing me and the shadow is behind me.

Becker:- I stand with the sun behind me and my shadow is in front of me.

Annika - On a cloudy day the clouds are blocking the sun and making a shadow that we call a cloudy day.

Pearl - I can make a flower shadow with my hands when I stand in the sun.

Henia - I like making a chicken shadow with my hands.

Natalie - Look at the ground. I made a butterfly shadow with my hands.

Yinon - When the sun comes closer to you your shadows are bigger.

Ezra - At night the light of the sun is blocked and that is a shadow!

King Solomon uses the metaphor of light to describe performing mitzvot and studying Torah. The light of Torah dispels darkness and confusion.

KDH children light up our lives!

Morah Ruth

Morah Sara

Morah Gail

Morah Jessica