Gan Kindergarten's Blog

It’s Spring! Must be time for painting, planting, observing pupae, and playing in the sun.

It’s two weeks to Shavuot!! Must be time for blending with 4th grade buddies and finding the magic in the alef-bet’s connection to numbers.

Mapping our World for a kindergartener means starting  with the miniverse before moving out to the universe.

Where is my home?  What is my address?  Where do my friends live?  Where is my school, my parks, my stores?   Where is Seattle, Washington State,  and Israel?

This week we have practiced  following paths, looking at different maps,  drawing maps, and building our classroom and school with blocks.  In math, we played based 10 with sticks, straws, rocks and cubes and learned new games.

And then…. off to Israel! Imagine… moving into the greater world from the safety of our home. Now, that’s SJCS!

Temple Building with Sandstone

Our morning and afternoon building activities build so many things… integration, cooperation, creativity and knowledge content. Experiencing stone, fragmenting, wear and tear, rock types in the morning. Jerusalem stone and blending with 5th graders to build the Holy Temple in the afternoon. Rocks. A simple thing. Yet so important. God, You are my Rock and my Redeemer. Rocks. Maybe not so simple, after all.

We are counting by fives and twos, telling word stories and acting them out, finishing our handwriting book, learning sounds, and building with stones and mosiacs.

Over the past two days we have been reading, acting, and drawing about some of our feelings and emotions.   We read and acted the The Greatest Power by Demi and Anh’s Anger by Thich Nat Hanh.  When you are angry,  where do you feel it?  What happens?   Can you find a way to come to calm, and watch your anger change? We read Anh’s Anger and The Greatest Power  in the beginning of the school year.  Revisitng the topics of inner strength and anger, the discussion and reflective  art work demonstrated a growing understanding of different emotions.

Today was Naomi’s oneg and the class wanted to act out the process, with Morah Shoshana playing the role of all the students!  Gan children love to act out their routines and love to experience role reversal. Their imagination play also reinforces the things that are important to them. Important elements from today’s play? Shabbat, family, compliments, structure, and tzedakah. Indeed, play is our work.

Today began with a rockin’ celebration with Lily’s family in honor of her sixth birthday. We had a great drum circle, and little Alice kept the beat!

Using glass mosiac tiles, the students created designs and patterns.

We enacted the Magic School Bus - Into the Center of the Earth as we drilled our way into the center of the earth, through the crust, sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous layers, through the melted rock, mantle, outer core, and inner core - and came back out and landed in the sedimentary layer where we stayed - grinding, breaking and pounding sandstone outside with our safety, travel goggles.  It was quite a trip!

The afternoon was filled with blended activities with the fifth and first grade – Wonderful Day!

Excitement is growing throughout the school for our ‘trip’ to Israel! This week we have finished making our book comparing the United States and Israel, we have blended with 5th grade to learn about maps and to specifically make a topographical map of Israel. Today we blended with 3rd grade and then the entire school to celebrate Israel’s birthday! We made flags, wrote blessings for the State of Israel and then had a huge parade ending with songs and t’fillot (prayers) for Israel. Of course, a birthday party calls for cake, and so we ended our day with cake!

Excitement about Hebrew grows too, and throughout our room during free choice children could be seen and heard playing “Hebrew Homework” and sorting and counting bears and magnets by Hebrew colors and numbers.

A Poem by Gan about the national symbols of America and Israel..

Eagles-

Alive, flying, chasing, living, powerful, diving, Guardian.

Menorah-

Candles burning, Temple, Being a Jew, Being with God, God is the protector of every living thing in the world.

Have a good weekend. Shabbat Shalom.

Ssshh! Have you heard? We will be taking a trip (PRETEND!) to Israel, (but it will be such good pretend it will feel like a real trip!) Don’t be surprised if your student starts talking about this trip. Play along, but also reassure your child that it will be pretend!

This week we are comparing things we find in “Yisrael” and “Amerikah.” We are working on a book to this concept and are practicing writing “Yisrael” on each page. We explored photographs, books, and charts to discover things that interest us and used all of the Hebrew in our circle time.

Ariana and Shoshana- B’Yisrael yeish ‘mosaics.’ (In Israel there are mosaics.)

Adira- B’Yisrael yesh Morah Shoshana (digging in a cave). (In Israel there is Morah Shoshana)

Jaron and Jonny- B’Yisrael yesh gezerim Yisraeli. (In Israel there are Israeli carrots.)

Naomi- B’Yisrael yesh yam, Kotel, v’shemesh. (In Israel there is a sea, the Kotel and the sun.)

Idan- B’Yisrael yesh Migdal David. (In Israel there is the Tower of David.)

Naomi E.- B’Yisrael yesh yam v’Kotel. (In Israel there is a sea and the Kotel.)

Sasha- B’Yisrael zeh ham. (In Israel it is hot.)

Oscar- B’Yisrael yesh Kotel. (In Israel there is the Kotel.)

What  does playing with blocks and creating a playdough factory have to do with social justice?

Defining social justice is a challenge, but as Rahima C. Wade  points out in her book Social Studies for Social Justice, “social  justice starts with relating to each other with care and respect, standing up for what is right, and providing equitable distribution of resources.”

As you read through a moment in Gan, see if you can find moments of care, respect and equitable distribution. . .

Scene – Bears are  sorted according to color on the floor.  Blocks are stacked high.  Both genders are playing, but in different areas. Two students are creating a playdough factory on the tables.

“Hey,  we can all have the baby bears.  Let’s make sure we all have one.  Remember, we don’t want to fight again.”   And then,  “Don’t yell that in my ear, I’m right here and can hear you.”   “Look, this ship is for all the bad bears, and you can make a plank out of the wedge!” The boys continue to build.   “Yeah, let’s say the bad bears go on the ship and then out to the ships that can be rockets.”  “Great idea!”      “Wait, we need something high enough.” Jaron makes a tall tower and announces,  “Hey, this is 8 hands tall!”  to which  Idan adds,  “It is 41 of these lines!”   Oscar says,  “I want to use my feet to measure.”  ( Play now moves into measurement for several minutes).

Lily and Jonny are in the playdough factory, sorting, counting, measuring and taking orders for cookies. “Hey Jonny, that is a really great shape!”    “Thanks Lily.  I wonder how many we can make?”  “Lily replies,  “I don’t know but we could count.”   They continue to make “cookies”, smiling, complimenting and organizing their baked goods.

Naomi and Ariana are tyring to make a lounge chair out of blocks.   “Great idea Naomi,  I wonder if these square blocks will work.”  Naomi replies,  ”I don’t know, we may need more, but we have to share the blocks with boys.  That’s Ok, because it looks like we have what we need.”  At this point, the boys are standing over the girls.  Sasha says, ”You guys should make a castle.”    Ariana replies,  ”No, we are fine making a chair and you guys don’t have to stand over us and watch us all the time and we can make what we want.”    Jaron says,  “Yeah, besides we need to make our ships.”    Oscar says,  “I really like your ship Sasha.”    “Thanks Oscar.”     “Hey look at what Jaron made!”  Idan is standing and pointing at Jaron’s tower.    ”This is so cool. This is my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world,  well except Ninjago” replies Jaron.

Today our Gan community was thriving –  Compliments, sharing, and standing up for what is important.

We continue to rehearse for the play (Tuesday, April 24th at 9am) The stage can be overwhelming, but all of the students are really focused, and very excited about performing for the school and Gan parents. Dancing, singing and saying lines.  The best performances are the ones leading up to the play.

Today we became with familiar with pennies and nickels.    How many pennies make a nickel?   Can you count by fives?  How many nickels make a quarter?  The students took turns playing ‘banker’ using the cash register.

We practiced printing lower case y and j, finished thank you notes to second grade, and asked our survey questions to fourth grade.  We listened to the beautiful song of the robin reminding us that even though the skies are grey and rainy, it is springtime.

This afternoon we read “The Mouse and the Matzah Factory” and learned about making matzah, which we proceeded to do with our 5th grade buddies! They also helped us make a page our our “Big Book Haggadah.”