The rest of Tishrei

It's both joyful and difficult to have so many holidays at the start of the school year. It's wonderful to expose our students to the festivals, and have the opportunity to celebrate together as a community, but it can be challenging to have so many stops and starts. Now that the Hebrew month of Tishrei comes to a close, we can delve more deeply into our curriculum and establish routines. And, it will be easier for me to keep this blog updated. But look how much fun we had!

In the past 2 weeks, we've launched our year-long study of Torah. We began by exploring several sifrei torah (Torah scrolls.)

We also created a museum of children's photographs. I know many of you saw these on display at Simchat Torah at the synagogue. We also recorded our observations of what all Torah scrolls have in common. Some observations included: All Torahs have "clothing." All Torahs are made of parchment. All Torahs are written by hand. 

This week, we read the first story in the Torah - the story of Creation. Children listened to one verse of the story read aloud in Hebrew, and the rest of the story in a simple English translation. We talked about some of the children's questions, and each child created an illustration to represent a part of the story that s/he especially liked.

We also went on a scavenger hunt on Abundance Farm to find something that was created on each day of creation according to the Torah.

Today, we worked with our sixth grade buddies to create collages representing the various days of the creation story. The children were so engaged and working so hard, we decided to stretch the activity over two weeks, and will complete them next Thursday. Pictures coming soon!

In math, we've been working on solidifying our sense of numeracy, and demonstrating our understanding of numbers on paper. Children have been completing their 10 Little Dots books, which will be on display in the classroom next week, and recording how many objects they have counted. We've discussed the various ways children can show information - pictures, words, numerals, or a combination.

Bag F contains 3 stones

In language arts, we've begun our own alphabet books! Each day, we focus on a new letter of the alphabet, and generate a list of words beginning with the letter. Each child chooses one or more words for his/her page, and practices reading his/her growing book. By the end of this week, we'll be up to E.

And of course, we continue to create really cool stuff at explorations, look at books, bake delicious challah, get lots of exercise at recess, and sing, sing, sing.

our class gets weighed at the northampton survival center

Thanks to everyone for our beautiful sukkot breakfast. I look forward to many more celebrations together.