Our classroom has been filled with Chanukah fun and activity

Our wooden Menorahs came out beautiful, the children painted, hammered and decorated their menorahs themselves and they are very proud and very excited about lighting them.

we made a chart with a column for each letter and played dreidel. The children each had a turn to spin the dreidel, identify the letter and then stick a sticker on the chart under the letter they landed on. Playing dreidel is fun, a great fine motor activity and we charted our results.

Then we counted up each column and discussed how many each column had, which had more, which had less which had equal amounts etc.

Abigail, Jacki and Ben match the number of candles to the number on the index cards (1 - 8 for 8 nights of Chanukah)

We have set out a box of dreidels and grids and the children used them to make different patterns with the different color dreidels and the different sizes.

the finishing touches

straws & connectors

"it's a jumbo jet"

"it's a really tall tower"

"this looks like a headband"

"I made a windmill"

Surprise reader

Thanks to Max & Leila's Daddy for coming in to be a surprise reader and reading Buffalo Wings and The Rainbow Fish to us.

all about ladders

We made ladders out of popsicle sticks because we learned about ladders in the Parsha. Leila told us that her Daddy uses a ladder to get stuff down and Ben says that he has a ladder in his guest room.

our pop corn seeds are growing

Guess what? The corn that we planted into Ziploc bags and hung on our windows is growing. We opened up the bags to get a better look. We looked closely at the plants and roots, and we all watered our seeds so they can continue growing.

How many?

We have started marking on our bulletin board how many boys and how many girls are in school each day. After sticking up little cut-outs with each child’s name the children asked if there are more boys than girls, and so we decided to figure it out. We noticed straight away that there were more boys, but how many more? Here’s how we figured it out: We matched 4 blue boy cut-outs to 4 pink girl cut-outs, and realized we were left with 2 extra boy cut-outs. This showed us that in school that day there were 2 more boys than girls. What a great math lesson!

numbers numbers

We have been practicing our numbers with some new games. One game has 6 cups, with each cup having a picture of a squirrel and a number in it. We put the correct number of acorns into each cup. We also have a new matching game, where we match the number to a picture.

Parsha

This week we used Playmobil people to act out the story of the Parsha (weekly Torah portion).

In this week’s Parsha, Yaakov leaves his home because he is running away from Esav. Along his way to his uncle Lavan’s home he stops to sleep, and has a dream about a tall ladder that reached from the ground all the way to the sky, with angels going up and down.

The making of a mural...

We are working on a cooperative fall mural. It is on the wall outside our classroom.

Guess what? We did not paint it with paintbrushes at all! To paint the sky we used cobs from the corn we had shucked. We used pine cones to paint the trees, and for the leaves we used the tissue paper we had cut and we stamped with the stem of pumpkin,

it is almost complete, more pictures coming soon...

our classroom band

The children were very interested in music this week. One morning they took out the basket of instruments and started their own classroom band. "I've never been in a band before," Jacki said

The Morahs put on music, and the children danced joyously around the room and played their instruments.

The leaves are falling down...

look at their smiles!