Alphabet books and Rosh Hashanah - some highlights from the last week (or so)

I hope all of you had a joyful Rosh Hashanah. We spent a lot of time talking about and preparing for the holiday. Many children continued to perfect their shofar blowing skills, and we focused on learning the names of the different "songs" of the shofar - each blast has a Hebrew name and a pattern. We learned the song "shofar blast" by Ellen Allard to help memorize this new information. Your kids are a lot cuter than this group, but they might have fun watching.

To learn about the special foods associated with Rosh Hashanah, we went on an apple picking trip (thank you Lauren Weinsier for driving!) and baked round, sweet challah breads, some with apple and some without. I hope everyone found the two pieces your child brought home on Wednesday!

In language arts we are continuing to focus on hearing the sound in words, and identifying the letters that make the starting sounds of various words. We began creating individual alphabet books where each child chooses one or more word to draw on each page. We completed the "c" page last week. I happened to catch Xavier reading his aloud to Shalev:

We're continuing our long term project on Torah. Have you visited our Torah 'museum' in the classroom?

Last week we adopted a miniature Torah for the classroom, and read the first story in the scroll in English (along with one line in Hebrew to hear what it sounds like.) We learned about the seven days of creation - the Torah's story of the world's birthday. Children heard the story twice and shared what they noticed and wondered about the text. We'll revisit the story before Simchat Torah, the holiday which falls in 2 weeks, when Jewish people all over the world being reading the Torah from the very beginning.

We also visited the ark at Congregation Bnai Israel to see how the Torah's "clothing" changed for Rosh hashanah. The children took these pictures: 

In math, we've been sorting by attributes and counting from low to high and from high to low, while also keeping track of our math routines. 

This week, we'll be visiting the Northampton Survival Center on Tuesday afternoonfor a tour, and to introduce our year long tzedakah project. On Wednesday afternoon we'll be visiting Gil's chickens for a special holiday activity with Rabbi Riqi - I'll send a reminder, but please leave a car seat for your child on Wednesday. This week we will also welcome Ana Gremli, a student from UMASS, who will be joining us two mornings a week this semester as part of her Foundations of Literacy Education class.