It's Autumn, All Right

Have you heard about Bentzi? The newest member of the Gan is a turtle. He's from Israel, and he only speaks Hebrew. So whenever Bentzi comes out of the closet (literally -that's where he lives...) we only speak Hebrew. So far, he has helped children practice greetings and their Hebrew names. He's also asked them how they are (Mah Nishma?/מה נשמע?) and begun to teach them to count in Hebrew. (So far, we've practiced up to 3.) Bentzi makes Hebrew a lot of fun so children are very enthusiastic to spend time with him.

We've also begun writing workshop.This week everyone in the Gan did what writers do. during writing workshop - think, draw and write. Writing workshop will be a daily fixture in our classroom for the rest of the year, where we will do these three things over, and over, and over again. We will start every workshop with a mini-lesson, teaching something to improve our craft, and move on to some sustained, independent writing time, during which I will conference with individual students about their work. We will end each workshop by sharing work and revisiting what we learned that day. Here's a video of one of our Gan students doing one of our first author shares:

Gan Author Share from Lander-Grinspoon Academy on Vimeo.

Each month we will focus on one particular genre of writing. During that time, all of your child's writing work will be gathered in his or her writing folder, which you are welcome to look at any time you visit. At the end of each unit, we typically hold a writing celebration, when each child will present one special piece of work, "fancied up" for publication. Sometimes we will invite other members of the school community, and sometimes we will invite parents. I promise to keep you posted.

You might be wondering what I mean when I talk about "writing" for five and six year olds, some of whom are just learning their ABC's. Know that writing means something different for every child, but all children are going to be sharing stories on paper, and in time, all children will be including letters and words in their writing. Every child's writing will be different and wonderful.

In Torah, we read the beginning of the story of Gan (Garden of) Eden. We heard the section of the Torah in which Adonai Elohim plants a garden with a variety of trees that are good to eat, and two trees in the middle of the garden which the two humans are not allowed to eat. 

We're doing a mini-unit on seeds. We gathered some seeds from our milkweed pods, our apple picking trip, and our Etrog from sukkot, and Meira's mom sent us some pea seeds. We also headed over to Abundance Farm with our fifth grade buddies and gathered dill, pepper, calendula and bean seeds. All of these seeds are nestled in damp paper towels as we wait to see if they develop "shoots and roots." At the end of next week, we'll begin a unit on fungus, which we will launch with a field trip next Friday morning to Arcadia.

We continue to work on our alphabet books to solidify our letter recognition and math games that reinforce number sense, number recognition and number writing. Our imagination station has been transformed into a rock and roll stage (we'd love some glitzy costumes if anyone has any to share.) And, of course we continue to make lots of creations in the materials lab. We're having lots of fun.

Feel free to join us for Kabbalat Shabbat in the Gan at 2:45 - please let me know by the morning how many to expect.