Greetings Gan Ramat Gan Parents!! On the English side of things, we have finally introduced the last of the alphabets during Fundations over the last two weeks. Now, we will just continue to review them each day, along with each sound, as well as rhyming and beginning sounds. Last week was also our official last week of our families and homes unit, but I still need everyone’s family crests/family shields/ code of arms for discussion and display. As it is black history month, we’ve discussed a few things that African Americans have invented(see the door). However as we have three and four year olds that don’t quite understand this concept, what I’ve done more is read children’s books that depicts African American families, and children...just regular books. I have a collection of these picture books. One is called library, which about a little boy that loves the library, and another called “I’ve got the rhythm”, and “Marvelous me”, “Honey I love”, and many more titles. My goal this month is to just make sure that children see depictions of themselves and others in books and photos. I just want it to be the norm, so I will be using these books throughout the year. Last week I focused more on animal homes/habitats, since it was the last week. The new work introduced was “habitat”(ask them what a habitat is over the weekend). I read a book about animals that was bought for us at the book fair, and I showed them videos of real animals, focusing on the Savannah animals, and the forest animals. They really enjoyed learning more about animals and their homes. Now, I am super excited about our new unit, which the English team got to choose. When we were throwing ideas in the ring, I knew what I wanted, and everyone else was on the same page. So, without further ado...Our new unit is “Space the final frontier”, and I couldn’t be more excited to teach this unit. Science and literacy are my favorite to subjects!! I’ve taught the Space/planet unit to 3-5 year olds for the last 20 years, so I am ready to roll!! Please keep those paper towel and toilet paper tubes coming, we are definitely going to be using these for this unit!! I still have a bunch already, but more couldn’t hurt, and I can share it with other classrooms as needed. On Monday please take home your child’s body projects, and family trees. I want to display the family crests only because I will need space for space projects as well. The other thing I need is small kids sized shoe boxes...if you do t have any at home, I know some shoe stores will give them away if you ask for them. If we could get a volunteer to go 19 shoe boxes the size of your child’s feet that would be awesome! Well, that’s it for now, but until next time... Ms. Cindy Shalom!שלום We are learning about clothing in Hebrew. Last week we designed our shirts (chulza), This week we designed shoes (nalayim). You can see our design at the entrance. Our newly designed shoes (nalayim) also tribute to Jan Matzeliger. "Jan Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo (now Suriname) in 1852. Matzeliger settled in the United States in 1873 and trained as a shoemaker. In 1883, he patented a shoe lasting machine that increased the availability of shoes and decreased the price of footwear." We made our laundry in the Dramatic Play area and learned to put things on the clotheline in Hebrew. We used the Sun (shemesh) to dry our clothes and then we folded them in our basket. Please click here for our new vocabulary: Clothes Joelle's dad, Clint, visited us and gave an amazing presentation about the Hot Comb, a tribute to Annie Malone and Madame C. J Walker See pictures below. Thank you for the amazing afternoon, Clint. Nathanael's dad, Mark, was our Mistery Reader on Friday. Thank you for reading!
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Shalom!שלום We spent the two first days of the week with assessments in Hebrew about the Family Unit. We all know our family members in Hebrew, so it was fun to recognize them on pictures . We started our new Hebrew Unit this week: Clothing Designed our shirts and learned about our uniforms: chultza- shirt michnasayim - pants chazait - skirt simla - dress Watched our new Clothing Playlist on Friday. (click on the link to watch it at home) Celebrated Valentine's Day and Ms. Cindy read books about Michelle and Barak Obama. See photos below: Moments of the Week Slideshow: Shalom!שלום This week we added two family members to our Hebrew vocabulary. Doda - aunt Dod - uncle We read "Yalda Echat Amra" ( A girl said). The book is about a little girl who could not pronounce the word "traktor", so the whole family is coming together to help her pronounce the word. This is a great book to practice the name of family members. I placed a copy of the final page in the book bags on Friday, so you can practice the names at home. Please watch and listen to the book below. Welcome to the English side of Gan Ramat Gan!! This week the children created envelope houses to go up in our Envelope city. They had fun making them, some more than others. One child wanted to make her grandmothers house as well, so she did two. A few others wanted to make two houses as well. Those will go up on display this week. We also continued to review our letters and their sounds, as well as learning what rhyming words are, and then practicing making sets of these words. I brought in some children’s books from my home collection that are by African American authors and/or depict African American children/families (for Black History Month). The class really enjoyed these books! The titles were: Full, Full, Full Of love, Best friends, and Little red and the very hungry lion. This week I will bring in more titles with that same theme. Just a gentle reminder that the family crests are due the week of the 18th( by or before that morning of Friday the 22nd). Also a reminder that toys are not allowed to brought to school except on Friday’s...it makes life easier if there is only one day a week that we have to keep up with toys...and let’s not for get the, “I don’t want shares” argument. So Friday’s are the only days that they will be allowed to walk around with a toy from home. Thank you in advance for your support on this!! Until next time... Ms. Cindy On the 100th Day of School Mr. Josh entered our classroom and we experienced what happens when water and dry ice meet. During our Math time Ms. Cindy distributed vinegar and food coloring and we learned to use the eye dropper and put more and more drops on baking powder. See our experience below: Science Experiment of the Week: Moments of the Week: Greetings everyone, and welcome to another blog edition here in Gan Ramat Gan! This week on the English side of things, we have continued to work on letter sounds and letter recognition. We are also continuing our lessons on rhyming, which some are getting and some are not...which is okay. Introducing this concept is important, but they don’t have to comprehend everything in pre-k three, so no worries there. Remember to make learning these skills fun at home by using everyday items, and every day events (cooking, getting dressed, going to the store, going for walks, etc.), and point things out, while asking questions. In math, we are learning number identification, putting numbers in order, patterns, and grouping. Groceries stores are great for math games, so take advantage and have fun! Our unit is homes and families, so here is an easy fun home activity to do with the entire family, and share with the class. Please create a family crest/coat of arms. This will represent your family, and who you are as a family. Your families surname should be on maybe a large poster board cutout of a shield, and then just add things that make your family unique, and who they are...and remember, every family is unique! Each member of the family should have input and be represented on the crest. Think about a family tradition...something you can agree upon as something you do together...where is you family originally from? Then maybe add small individual things. Just have fun, be creative, and if you need more information...google family crests/coat of arms. It’s not just for wealthy aristocrats...it’s for all of us!! These are due by the week of the 18th (after the three day holiday weekend) Have fun! Until next time..... Ms. Cindy Shalom!שלום This week we continued to learn about our family members in Hebrew We added the following words: ah - brother ahot - sister We read two beautiful books: Sefer HaPilpilim (Elephants by Alona Frankel) about an elephant family with ima, aba and pilpilon (small elephant) who were a 3 member family until ima had a small baby elephant in her tummy. It is a beautifully illustrated book by the author. HaSefer shel Ima (Mother's Book). This book has an English version you may find in your local library. We also drew our families and spoke about the members of our families in Hebrew. We played family bingo in Hebrew and this week we won a building block with each card we identified, so we could build a house for our families. The highlight of the week were our Thursday Birthday Party for Joelle, Emmanuelle and Max, and our Friday Field Trip to the National Building Museum. "Better than the Inaugural Ball" - said the carpet of the National Building Museum. As we say in Hebrew:: "עושים חיים" - Osim chaim! - We are having fun. Shalom!שלום We had a wonderful week in Gan Ramat Gan with the warmest unit of the year. We learn about families and homes. We moved into our new home with our pets in the Dramatic Play area. Played our first serious memory game in Hebrew. This week was the first time when we played memory game with pairs. We practiced our family vocabulary and developed our visual memory skills. (see moments of the week slideshow) We played Bingo as well and practiced to link words in Hebrew. For example: kelev - dog chatul -cat kelev vechatul - dog and cat saba - grandfather savta -grandmother savta vesaba - grandmother and grandfather This is a very important step in language learning, we can practice linking with any nouns we learned. For example: adom veyarok - red and green kise veshulhan - chair and table This week we read an Israeli classic: Eliezer veHaGezer (Eliezer and the Carrot) We played the story several times, and in small groups we recreated the story with puppets. Please watch the song version of the story below. Greetings again and welcome to the Gan Ramat Gan blog! Last week on the English side of things, we continue to work on letter recognition and letter sound, because every child does not learn the same thing at the same time so of course we are taking our time and continuing the work. We have also moved on to rhyming words using fun games. This allows me to see how they are comprehending rhyming words. What I’ve noticed is that I have to try a different method of teaching rhyme based on a child’s readiness skills because many were having a hard time with the concept. I have a few new things to try next week, and we’ll see how that works. I will change it up as many times as necessary in order to teach them this skill. Our new unit is of course homes and families, so we are reading books on different kinds of families, and different kinds of homes. I used math concepts to count each member of each child’s household, and then group them based on that amount. So we found out that there are seven groups of four member households in our class, next in line is three, and one group of five, etc. So in essence the children are learning math concepts as they are learning about families. Remember to continue to work with your child on letter, number, and sound recognition in a non-pressure type of way. Based on my assessments thus far...your children will be ready for pre-k 4 this fall, so You need not worry. You can teach pre-reading, pre-writing, and math concepts using real life experiences.(taking walks, going grocery shopping, going on weekend field trips, etc). Learning environments are everywhere...point it out and have discussions with your little one!! Until next time! Ms. Cindy Moments of the Week Slideshow Greetings and Salutations Gan Ramat Gan Families! Last week on the English front, I focused on completing the assessments which were ALL done by Thursday. As I got the chance to see how much they generally improved with letter recognition and letter sounds, my focus was on making sure to continue to take my time with Fundations each morning. It is now very evident through these assessments that it is working and they are picking up more and more. Everyone has improved in at least two areas, but some in ALL the areas. So with things that I noticed need more work...I am slowly implementing verbal and visual learning experiences that will promote comprehension skills in these areas that need more work. I am very proud of our children!! Next week our new unit starts, and it is all about Families and Homes! Myself and Ms. Anna will be creating a house in the dramatic play area out of boxes. I already requested many boxes from Mr. Paul, and he came through big time! So we will create a family room, a kitchen, and possibly a small bedroom. Keeping this in mind, if you want to volunteer to bring in real items like: dish towels, grown-up mommy and daddy clothes/ shoes/ purses/ wallets, empty juice containers/cereal boxes, butter containers with lids, etc. Also yoga mats for our beds, small kitchen curtains, family room curtains (we can hang from the wall). Just think about what you have in your kitchen, family room, and a child’s bedroom at home that we can safely use in our makeshift house. Well, I guess that it for now! Remember Tuesday is a half day...now that’s it! So until next time... Ms. Cindy halom!שלום This week we learned about our families in Hebrew. We played memory, hiding and bingo games with family picture cards. Listened to and watched our Family Playlist songs in Hebrew. On Friday we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday. We read a book of Shane W. Evans: We March. If you have a chance, find this book in your local library or click above to watch it on youtube. In the morning Ms. Cindy read the book in English. During Hebrew read aloud we read the book in Hebrew and learned the following sentences in Hebrew. Yesh li chalom. - I have a dream. Anachnu sharim. - We sing. Anachnu tzoadim. - We march. We also identified family members on the pictures.: Ima - Mother Aba - Father Ach -Brother Achot -Sister We listened to our Martin Luther King Playlist. In the afternoon we chose our favorite picture from the book see pictures below. MLK Day Album Moments of the Week: Greetings Gan Ramat families! On the English side of things...It’s Assessment Week!! Actually this week and next week are all about getting our students assessments completed, and since our previous body unit ended the week before our winter break, and the next one starts in about a week...this time is focused on seeing where your your child is academically, so that we can plan accordingly. I still had morning meetings with the children on Tuesday and Friday (today). We still had Fundations, but not second step. I introduced two new letters this week as well...V and W. After all of the assessments are complete, we will get ready for our new unit, which is “Family and Homes”. The read-a-Louds this week were: City Shapes, and Lewis Cardinals First Winter (two books I bought while in Williamsburg), and the children seemed to like both of these books! Well that’s it for now, so until next time... Ms. Cindy Shalom!שלום This week we reviewed the Hebrew vocabulary of our body. We learned a new game which helped us practicing the Hebrew words we already know. This game is the Hebrew version of "Simon said" In Hebrew we say "HaMelech Amar" which means the "king said" As we are going to start the Family Unit next week, we read the book about Naphtali again and again which teaches us family members besides the numbers. Ima - mother Aba- father Savta - grandmother Saba - grandfather Dag - fish Chatul -cat Kelev -dog Tuki - parrot Please play us the following video with Naphtali, the family members and the numbers. Started to listen to family songs in Hebrew. Click here to see and listen to the Family Playlist. We practiced tracing the numbers 1 and 2 this week.. Moments of the Week: Greetings and Happy Holidays Gan Ramat Gan families!! Over the last two weeks in Gan Ramat Gan, the children have continued to work on their emotional skills with Second Step. They were introduced to the concepts of feeling comfortable and uncomfortable, and how their bodies may show them this when they are feeling one or the other. They were given examples using the scenario cards and a few of my simple examples. This week’s Second Step revolves around disappointments and examples of how they could handle them. Two ways are talking to a grown up, and taking deep calming breaths to settle down. The letters introduced over the last two weeks were: P, H, R, and K, and during Fundations I like to switch up how we practice letter recognition and sounds. It is working, because each day they astound me with how much they are picking up! We of course have had many read-a- louds over the last two weeks, so here are just a few: I ain’t gonna paint no more, Llama Llama loves to read, Happy birthday cupcake, My five senses, and many more!! We have been working on body parts, and how they move and work, and learning about our five senses. We played a little game for each sense. Our projects have been to use shapes to make body books, use a body part to paint(fingers) snow, and using the flannel board to make body shapes/people, and we played a fun bones counting game during math center time. There have been more exciting learning adventures, but I don’t want to name all of them at once, so I just mentioned a few. Have a wonderful winter break, and I’ll see you all afterwards for more wonderful educational experiences! Until next year... Ms. Cindy Shalom!שלום We were practicing for the Winter Lights Festival every day. We love the Butterfly and the Blue Balloon. Ask us to perform our show at home as well for different family members during the holidays. We practiced numbers and patterns in Hebrew and played a lot of math games. If you have time durning the holidays, play Domino with us or games with a Dice. You can ask us to count the dots in Hebrew as well, we are experts... On boring Snow Days, click on our Snow Day Hebrew Fun page and choose a film or a playlist. Have a Mesiba (party) with our favorite party music. Our Favorite Moments: Ms. Cindy was teacher of the week. Congratulations! Shalom!שלום This week we used Unifix cubes to measure our body. We measured our hight with Ms. Cindy in English. Ms. Anna traced our feet and then we measured the size of our foot in Hebrew with the Unifix cubes. We are working on a "feet project" , but the outcome is a surprise, so we can't tell you more about it. We are playing new puzzles and math games. One of our new favorites is a combination of number recognition , counting and stringing beads. We have small plates with numbers turned upside down on the table. We chose one of the plates, turn it. In the plate there is a number and also dots. We try to recognize the number in Hebrew. If we can't , we are able to count the dots. Then we take beads from the basket and count the same amount, if it is matching, Ms. Anna gives us a string to string the beads. When we are ready we can turn another paper plate. ( You can prepare this game at home as well, ) This week we traced the number "2" and we are planning to trace different numbers every week. On Monday, we welcomed our new friend, Emanuellle in the class. This week we had a few chilly mornings, so we had recess in the Gym. We played with balls and it was a lot of fun, see pictures in the slide show. We practice our Butterfly and Balloon Poems daily for the Winter Festival. We continue to learn and practice body parts in Hebrew and work in our Hospital. You can practice these words at home with the help of the video below. English Greetings Gan Ramat Gan! This week on the English side, the children were introduced to two new letters (R and P) during Fundations, and of course we reviewed the previous alphabets. I switched Fundations up a little this week, because I wanted to sort of gage what they knew as far as letter sounds, and letter recognition. This time I showed them photos of different things, and asked them to identify it first. Once they told me what it was, I then asked them what letter and then sound they thought it began with. Lastly, we would do a quick call and response kind of method(I say it, you say it). For example, if I point to myself and say, “Ba, B, Bat”, when I point to them, they knew to repeat it. Let me say that all of the children at least recognized two more letters than they did during the first assessment, and some have mastered far more. It makes me so proud to see them not only pick this up, but enjoy it as well! During Second Step we talked about how our bodies feel emotion, and I used the scenario cards and puppets to help teach them. So, they learned that sometimes when you’re worried or afraid, you may feel it in your tummy, or your heart rate picks up, or you breath faster, etc. It’s your bodies way of communicating your feelings. They learned about worried and frustrated feelings, and how it can make your body feel, and then how to deal with it, and hopefully let it go. Talk to your teacher or parent, to help you work out or understand why you’re feeling that way, and how to work through it. Ask your child about Michael’s worry, and Tatiana’s frustration, and see if they remember anything. I always add some of my own ideas to the mix, so it may not be 100% of what you read on second steps website. The other thing we have been doing over the last two weeks is learning about our body parts. We made body books, and we used the small connecting blocks to measure our height... well each child’s height. I have it written down at work, so I can’t remember the numbers off hand right now. During math we introduced a little splinter counting game using felt hand cutouts and wood-chips from outside. They rolled one die, counted the dots, and added that many pieces of wood chips to the felt hand(splinters). They seemed to enjoy this game! All in all it was a pretty good week! So until next time... Ms. Cindy Moments of the Week: Shalom!שלום This week we continued to learn about our body in Hebrew. We played games and did artwork while we were practicing the following words: einayim - eyes oznayim - ears raglayim - legs yadayim - arms (we also counted that we have two from the above body parts) beten- tummy gav - back af - nose pe - mouth We started to learn to play domino in Hebrew. We took turns, counted the dots and learned how to place the domino tiles on the lighting table. We keep practicing two poems for the Winter Light Festival: Parpar (Butterfly) and Balon (Balloon) This week we are posting several albums about our amazing life in Sela. Reptile Show Last Two Weeks with New Games fundraised by Ms. Cindy |
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June 2019
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