February (the month of snow)

Well, I think it's safe to say we are all ready for spring. The good news is, we celebrated Tu B'Shevat last week, the birthday of the trees, which is a reminder that spring is on the way. Eventually.

In Israel, the almond trees usually begin to develop their beautiful pink flowers when the holiday of Tu B'Shevat arrives. Because there's not a lot blooming here in New England, we time the planting of our paperwhite bulbs so that they are likely to flower on Tu B'Shevat. A few made it in time, and a few were very, very close. It's been really exciting for all the children to watch and record their progress. We sketched, measured, and finally, painted watercolors of our plants. Everyone is welcome to take his/her bulb home for safekeeping. Thanks, Kim, for sharing a photo of Ben's, safe and sound in his kitchen!

As part of our study of Tu B'Shevat, we also have begun learning the names of the parts of trees in Hebrew. After vacation, we'll also begin a short science unit on trees, with a specific focus on maple trees and sap. And, of course, syrup. We also had a school wide celebration featuring the "Seven Species", seven foods mentioned in the Torah as growing in the land of Israel. Children in grades K-3 were divided into groups, and each group prepared, and shared, a dish made from one of the items. There were wheat pancakes, barley salad, grape salad, stuffed dates, fig spread, olive salad and pomegranate punch.

In Language Arts we've been working on handwriting - correct formation of the uppercase letters - and continued practice in our book boxes and "spelling packets". Children are also building word rings of high-frequency words to help them recognize and spell words such as "like" "the" and "to." Our writing unit, small moments, has had a lot of interruptions from snow and other celebrations, and I will send home this writing, plus writing from the last two units, at the end of the week. (I held on to the earlier samples of writing for progress report writing.) We'll start fresh with a new unit on "How-To" books when we return.

In math, we are reinforcing understanding, reading, and writing teen numbers and working on recognizing and reading number sentences featuring the plus, minus and equals signs.

In Torah, as we work on the stories on the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, we are also continuing to learn about Ancient Canaan. As children finish up their weaving, we have two visitors scheduled this week who will teach about natural dying and hand spinning. (The latter guest has been cancelled twice because of snow, so let's hope for a full day on Friday!)

Children having been working together beautifully on the space station project, building deep tunnels in the snow, baking challah, and lots more. Here are a few parting shots...