Monthly Archives: April 30, 2017

We found a bird’s nest! in the Butterflies

We are loving our springtime discoveries! We encountered something new in our garden – a real bird’s nest! We inspected it carefully and noticed that it was made of twigs and grass and dirt.

We decided to create a similar nest in our classroom, so we collected lots of little sticks from around our garden and brought them inside.

Then we worked together to build a nest, using the real one as a guide. Our first step was to figure out how to make that round shape. We looked all around our room and thought about what we could use as a round base. We finally decided to use a bowl! Since our nest is brown like dirt we painted our bowl brown. Soon we will figure out how to use the twigs we gathered.

By |April 30, 2017|
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Music Came To Our Kitah! in the Sunflowers

We had such a busy week last week! We celebrated Mae’s birthday with a delicious yellow cake with chocolate icing. Followed by a book and a birthday bean bag game.

Miss Jill the music teacher came to visit our kitah! She loved listening to our circle time and  we even showed her our Shabbos Party a day early! Then we went to the gym and with Miss Jill we started singing songs for Yom Ha’atzmaut. We had such a good time!

We looked at books about Israel and talked about Northern Israel. We compared the North to the South. The North is very green and has a lot of trees and grass in contrast to the South that is very dry with plenty of sand. So it was quite obvious that we used green lentils to illustrate the North.

The Dead Sea is a sea that has nothing living in it because it is full of so much salt. We remembered our science experiment before Pesach. The egg actually floated in the salty water but sank in the water that had no salt. Some people actually float in the Dead Sea! We used salt and added blue food coloring to it. Then added the salt on the map where the Dead Sea is. Last but not least we added our blue rice to where the Kinneret is as well. And now our Israel maps are finished.

Our garden outside has a birds nest! There was no bird in there and the yeladim thought that the bird might be flying in the Shamayim. We inspected our nest and noticed that the nest was made out of tiny branches and sticks. It was so great to see a real nest […]

By |April 30, 2017|
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Getting ready for our Israel trip in the Butterflies!

We have been learning all about Israel in preparation for Yom Ha’atzmaut next week. We looked at a big picture of the Kotel and talked about what we noticed in the picture. The wall is very big. There are many big stones and bushes and plants grow between the stones. Some children asked what the people in the picture are doing, and we discussed that the Kotel is a place where people come to daven just like in a shul. People write notes to Hashem and stick them between the stones. They can ask for whatever they need. We each had the chance to share some things we would ask Hashem for at the Kotel, or something we would say thank Hashem for.

After that, the children were very excited to make their own Kotel stones. We used rectangular sponges to stamp the stones and then we added pieces of green paper for the bushe and plants.

 

We also made a big Israeli flag together. We have a few real flags in our classroom so we saw that the colors are blue and white. We also noticed the special star shape in the center.

We painted a big piece of paper with blue paint to use for the two stripes. We also used blue materials of different textures to collage the Magen David for the middle of the flag. We are going to hang it up next to the real flag we have in our classroom and see if they look alike.

We’re also busy packing for our trip to Israel. We started getting ready by decorating our suitcases with dot paints, stickers, and a picture of ourselves (so we don’t lose track of […]

By |April 26, 2017|
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Whose birthday is next week? in the Sunflowers

 

We love visiting our garden outside. We noticed that the bulbs that we planted last year have bloomed into beautiful and colorful flowers. Since the flowers were so colorful, we decided to make a spring collage for the kitah. The children enjoyed choosing spring themed colors of different textures and types of materials to decorate their collage. We love how it brightens our room!

Next week is Israel’s birthday! Yom Ha’atzmaut. She will be sixty nine years old! As you know, we will be focusing on different cities in Israel over the next week. The first city that we have been focusing on is Yerushalayim. Our Kotel is finished! In our study of the Kotel, we observed in the photos and posters that in between the stones some plants and bushes have been growing! How cool is that!! We also noticed that there was something stuffed between the stones. We discussed how people come to the Kotel as it reminds them of the Beit Hamikdash and in this way they can feel like they are physically as close to Hashem as possible. People write down their prayers and stuff them in the wall hoping Hashem will answer their prayer.  We will add our own special notes in the wall this week, as well as adding small plants in between the stones to make it look as authentic as possible.

 

 

We introduced the question, “When we go on our big trip to Israel, what would you put in your luggage?” We needed to do some research to find out what we would need. We spoke about the weather in Israel and the activities we can do there. Effie just came back from Israel so we even got to ask […]

By |April 26, 2017|
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We’re back! in the Sunflowers

Hope you had a wonderful Pesach with our families. We are so happy to be back!

We have a very big birthday to celebrate in a week. Whose? Israel’s! The country is turning Sixty nine years old. The yeladim pointed out that the number sixty nine is very big. “Like an adult like you Morah Lilli!” said Eli. He was right, I am an adult.

We are starting our focus on the city of a Yerushalayim. The yeladim knew that the big wall in the city is called the Kotel. We explained to the them that people come from all over the world to daven there. They also put notes in the wall to ask Hashem for things like keeping healthy, having a child or davening for someone who is sick. We are creating our very own kotel in the Art Studio. The yeladim painted many lunch bags gold. We will be stuffing them to make them look like stones. We will glue them on the butcher paper hanging on the wall, and it will really look like we have the kotel in our school!

We enjoyed making Anna’s birthday cake. Anna put all the ingredients in and the yeladim took turns mixing the batter!  Cannot wait for the Friday celebration!

We have the Israeli flag hanging in our kitah. We noticed that the colors were blue and white so the children wanted to make special necklaces that they will wear in honor of Yom Ha’atzmaut. We will use blue and white beads. We reviewed what a pattern can look like, and the yeladim tried to make a pattern with their beads. They will be so cute to wear.

Next? On to the country of Israel. We can’t wait to explore it!

 

By |April 24, 2017|
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Spring has Sprung in the Butterfly Class!

We’re back from Pesach and it’s really spring! We talked about what we know about spring. Everything is growing. Some of us remember seeing new flowers on the trees near our houses. The flowers in our garden at school have sprouted from the bulbs we planted in the fall. Even the parsley that we planted for Pesach finally grew! So, we thought it was time to make our classroom look like springtime as well.

After observing our flowers in our garden we decided to do some flower-inspired art explorations. First we used real flowers as paintbrushes and made yellow, pink, blue, and green paintings to hang in our art gallery. It is so fun to use different materials to paint with. Some of the little buds even stuck to our papers! The colors we used look just like the colors of flowers.

Next, some children said we should add flowers to our class tree, which was pretty bare from the winter, so we painted some with bright colors and hung them up. Another child had a great idea – to add leaves! So we painted green leaves and hung those too. Now our tree is in full bloom.

  

We can’t wait to play outside every day again and find more spring things to explore.

By |April 21, 2017|
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We finally sit down…. in the Sunflowers

These past two days have been jam packed with activities throughout the day! We needed to get the Seder table ready. The yeladim put the plates on the table as well as their cups for the grape juice. They really enjoyed their table art as well! The Seder plate and matza tray were placed in the middle of the table as well as Eliyahu’s cup. Once the table was set we went back to our kitah and started to get the food ready. Potatoes were boiled and once they were cool the yeladim peeled and cut them. The celery was washed in a sieve to get out all the dirt. Then onto the Charoset. We grated apples, added some dates, poured some grape juice and sprinkled some cinnamon. Mmmmmmmm.

Wednesday was such a beautiful day. We took a look at our garden and noticed that the bulbs we planted were blooming! The flowers were yellow and they were so beautiful. As we were looking at the garden, we noticed a man laying down some brick next door to the shule. Wow! We have been talking about building and bricks for four weeks! We just had to go and check it out! We walked next door and met the man that was laying down bricks for a wall. He seemed very happy. Not like the Yehudim that worked for King Paroah. He had something in the wheelbarrow called “leveling powder.” Tal thought it looked like cement that the Yehudim used. The man said it is like cement but not as heavy. Then he showed us how he put the brick down, put a piece of wood over it and took a hammer and banged on it. What […]

By |April 7, 2017|
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It sure is clean in the Butterfly Class!

We learned that on Pesach we don’t eat any chametz, so we decided to make sure our classroom was clean and chametz-free. We scrubbed the chairs, tables, and cabinets.

After that, we did bedikat chametz. We took turns holding a real feather, a spoon, and a paper bag and searched around the room for 10 challah pieces that Morah hid. Everyone worked together to make sure we found them all.

The last thing was to finish getting our kitchen ready for Pesach. We used tin foil to cover all the doors, the oven, and even the table. It was so much fun to tape the foil on. Now our kitchen is clean and shiny and definitely ready for Pesach cooking!

 

By |April 5, 2017|
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It’s Seder time! Time to decorate! in the Sunflowers

Our Seder is on Thursday and we are so excited to participate in the big event! It will take place in our Art Studio, so we knew exactly what we needed to do. Decorate the Mural Wall! We decided that we were going to paint the splitting of the Yam Suf. The yeladim love this story so much, that we are decorating our tablecloth as well with the splitting of the Yam Suf. The yeladim painted both sides of the plexiglass blue. Then for the sandy sea floor, we took brown butcher paper and they spread glue all over it. The yeladim took a cup and they filled it with sand. Then they sprinkled the sand all over the paper. The sandy paper will be hung in the middle of the plexiglass. We might have to add something in the “water!”

We also started decorating our entire tablecloth. The yeladim took their hands and spread the blue on two sides of the tablecloth. We will let you know how we will decorate the sandy sea floor. It is a surprise!

We reviewed the Hagaddah and practiced the Ma Nishtana. The yeladim love singing all the songs for Pesach. We cannot wait until you hear them!

Since the Seder has all different kinds of foods that represent different things, and the Seder plate also has many foods, we decided to start preparing the foods. They yeladim went to the kitchen to boil the eggs. Then the yeladim cracked the eggs and peeled them. Now they are ready!

We had fun doing an experiment with plain water sand salt water. We asked, “What will happen if we took a cooked egg and put in in a cup of plain water?” […]

By |April 4, 2017|
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