Weekly School Report

From Alex and Ari's teacher, a weekly report and pictures:


Monday

Our Open Play started off with some lovely interaction, which is impressive, given that parallel play at this age is still typical. They really played very nicely together, with nary a grab or a shove. Almost all of the children participated in helping to decorate our room for Autumn by building pretty leaf collages. If you haven't seen them yet, please stop in for a minute at drop-off (or pick-up) and admire their arrangements. We enjoyed a quick snack of pretzels and water, and then we sat down on the "lily pads" for Circle Time. The children really seemed to like hearing the story, "Biscuit Goes to School," by Alyssa Satin Capucilli, which tells a simple story of a puppy who doesn't want to miss out on the fun of school. Next, the children "helped" me tell the story of "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything," by Linda Williams. They had fun going "wiggle, wiggle" and "shake, shake" on cue.
We wrapped up just in time for the children to meet one of our favorite visitors, Miss Judy! Miss Judy, our itinerant music instructor, will visit us most Mondays throughout the school year. Miss Judy was impressed with how well behaved our class was, especially for a first visit. After we let Miss Judy move on to the next classroom, we enjoyed our first school lunch. As they munched, the children listened to me read "The Giving Tree," Shel Silverstein, and we talked about how apples will be important in our celebration of an upcoming holiday, Rosh Hashanah. After we cleared the table, we all got outside for some fresh air. Before we knew it, our first full day was done!


Wednesday

We got off to another good start at Open Play. The children thoroughly explored the toy shelf and played beautifully. Nearly everyone made it over to the art table, where we got messy with paint and began our Rosh Hashanah cards (not that you are to know anything about that yet!). At snack time, we had a very special occasion to celebrate: our first birthday! Reid turned the big "Oh! Three!" at the very beginning of the year, but we decided to postpone our celebration of this momentous first until we had begun our full schedule. Reid's mommy brought in Entenmann's Pop 'Ems, and we all sang "Happy Birthday!" in Hebrew and English. We also served the school-scheduled snack of celery and carrots, which to my delight got more attention than I might have expected with the sweet stuff on the table.

We grabbed a few available minutes for a quick playground session and then returned inside for Circle Time. We talked about the upcoming holiday and read the relevant pages from "Celebrate! A Book of Jewish Holidays" by Judith Gross. We sang "Itsy, Bitsy Spider," and the boys and girls did their best to imitate my hand play. Then, to get them moving a little bit, we sang an "Elmo version" of "If You're Happy and You Know It..." by Sarah Albee. The children giggled through the various emotions presented in the book and had lots of fun being very silly. They also helped me read "Where the Wild Things Are," by Maurice Sendak. It was quite terrifying to be "shown their terrible claws," I assure you! I've never been surrounded by cuter monsters.

Next, we had a very special treat: a shadow puppet show! The children in the four-year-old program, with the help of a wonderful visiting puppet master, put on a wonderful shadow puppet show about Rosh Hashanah. Our little group was spellbound.
Upon our return downstairs, we enjoyed our lunch completely and then made it outside to stretch our legs. Day two was done! Friday

Open play was varied and relaxed. We started our next Shabbat project, which is to decorate our kippot. A little more than half of the children worked on them; we'll get the other half done next week, and then we'll wear them during our Shabbat blessings every Friday. Instead of our visit to Morah Goldie's classroom for Shabbat Sing, we went upstairs to the APR for an all-school Shabbat Sing, led by our very own Morah Pam. The children gamely participated in the play-acting that went along with each song. When we returned downstairs, the songs continued with an element of silliness thrown in. We repeated the "Elmo version" of "If You're Happy and You Know It...." This time, we had the camera out; you'll see in the pictures that the children love the acting and dancing we do as we read/sing the book. For a little more movement, we went outside to the "grassy side" of the building and played "Stop! Go!" which can best be described as a ultra-simple version of "Red Light, Green Light." Next, we returned to our room, grabbed all the hats we could find, and read "Old Hat, New Hat" by Jan and Stan Berenstain. We also grabbed our rubber ball and played a variation of our ball-rolling game, in which the children had to figure out where I was going to roll the ball based on my description ("I'm going to roll the ball to someone wearing a blue, pointy hat!").

With perfect timing, our Shabbat family rolled in just as we finished our hat game. With the help of Laylie's mommy and grandfather, we blessed our candles, grape juice, and challah, and enjoyed our "Shabbat dinner" (a.k.a. lunch). Over our festive meal, our Shabbat family read the children an amusing story about a bear in Brooklyn on Shabbat. We topped off a nice day and a great week with some playground time.