Happy Chanukah Everyone.
We have been enjoying each day of Chanukah together.
I would like to share with you the Chanukah story as it was told in class.
The purpose of teaching the story of Chanukah is to give the children an understanding of the events that happened a long time ago that caused joy and celebration and a need to dedicate time for a holiday.
Here is the story...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

We gain a deeper understanding by learning with hands on experiences:

As we experience the fall season, we begin to feel the effects of the climate changing.
We feel the cold temperature and the cold wind outdoors. One way we adapt is by dressing in warmer clothes.

But what about the animals where their home is the cold outdoors, how do they respond to the climate changes?
We have discussed some of the animals that live near us in New Jersey and their behavior.
Today we witnessed how one animal, the horse, adapts to the cold weather. To our benefit, we had a wonderful opportunity to see first hand how the horse prepares itself for the fall and winter cold.

Puck, a miniature horse of the Tendler family visited us in school today. He has long thick brown fur, cozy and warm for the winter. However he did not always have long hair. We saw pictures taken of Puck in the summer time. Here we noticed that Puck’s fur on his back and tummy was very short. Some of us remember when he came to visit us in camp over the summer. His body knows that colder months are ahead and his fur grows long to protect him. Then when the warmer weather starts to approach Puck will begin to lose this long warm cozy fur.

Here are some of the things the children enjoyed about having Puck.
"I like to brush his long hair."
"I like to pet him, he is soft."
"He was running so fast."
"I was brushing his back."
"He had so much dirt that was so smelly on the bottom of his foot."
"I like giving him carrots and apples."
"I like to touch him."

Listening to some new and interesting information about Puck and other horses.

We quickly became comfortable around Puck. Here Delia is feeding Puck one of his favorite treats - carrots.

One thing horses like to do is run fast. We watched as Puck ran in our school playground. His hair is so long you can see it 'flying' as he runs!

Now that Puck's hair is long to keep him warm during the cold months there is lots to brush. There are different size brushes for the different parts of his body. Puck especially likes when he gets a message.

The children are gaining a sense of respect and connection to animal life from these encounters with Puck.
Thank you again Rachel for giving the children such a positive and educational experience.

See everyone at the Thanksgiving Feast on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.
Morah Batsheva

I am really enjoying my time in the Toddler Classroom. Not only do I love interacting with children this age, but I find it fascinating to stand back and observe them. Each child’s distinct personality really shines through and adds so much to the group.

Providing a sense of emotional safety is such a cornerstone of our program’s philosophy. We feel this sense of safety when we are “in the know”, when we feel part of the plan. When we feel “acted upon” it feels unsafe and icky! To that end, when Morah Batsheva gave birth to her baby daughter (Mazal Tov!), we discussed with the children why Morah Batsheva is not here. The words we used, “Right now, Morah Batsheva is taking care of her new baby, and when the baby gets a little older, Morah Batsheva will come back to our classroom.” That way, the children feel in control of – thus, emotionally safe with – their experience here at school.

Fall is in full swing! Over the past two weeks we have been learning about, exploring and experiencing fall all around us. Especially, toddlers engage their full senses as they experience and understand the world. Not only by sight, but through touch smell, taste and sound!

One day, as we opened the door to go outside, a gust of wind greeted the children, taking off many, many leaves from the trees. This cascade of leaves fell on the children, and they responded with glee. They instinctively held out their arms to catch the falling leaves. Their sense of joy was infectious. (I told you I love kids this age!!)

Our class is in the process of creating a book, that documents our multi-sensory Fall experience. We are also honing an assortment of skills in the process.

Here is a sampling;

Fine motor skills

For our book we are:

- Holding, dipping, spreading a fine glue brush.

- Tearing paper.

- Picking up, collecting things from the outdoors (leaves, acorns, pinecones).

- Painting with the objects we collected.

Literacy:

- Continuous dialogue while outdoors

- Seeing that both words and pictures on a page create a story book

- When illustrating our page, we want to still be able to see the words so we can read them.

- How we hold, and turn the pages in a book.

Logical/Mathematical Reasoning:

- Sorting through and choosing appropriate clothing to wear in the Fall time.

- (Causality): Rubbing- placing the textured, detailed leaves under the paper to reveal the details on the paper above-watching the results when rubbing a crayon on its side.

- Big and small representation (size distinctions) (I am also beginning to use the word “medium”, to add to the challenge.)

- Sorting and grouping our findings on our nature walks.

- Color recognition with leaves.

Visual spatial skill:

On this page you can see green grass on the ground, tall trees and clouds in the sky. For our children to be able to create this, we needed to observe and dialogue. We asked questions such as:

Where is the sky, on top or below?

Where does grass grow?

The way we put questions forth to the children is in a respectful, open manner, encouraging them to look further than their initial observations. This strengthens their skill and they become more aware and observant.

The children were looking at the leaves they had collected once on our nature walk. We noticed when we touched them, they felt dry and hard. Hmm I wonder what will happen if we scrunch them in our hands?

Crunch! They crumbled into small pieces. We went outside and caught some leaves that were falling from the tree. What do these leaves feel like?

“We can’t crunch them”, “they are soft”, the children noted.We brought them inside and compared the dry ones and the fresh ones. I wonder what we could do with our crumbled leaves? “Lets make a picture”, one child said. After a brief discussion, Morah drew an outline of a maple leaf on paper and the children had a fun time gluing and then sprinkling the crushes leaves onto the shape. Come take a look at the finishes product on our classroom wall!

We have been working on our numbers. We played a number matching game. We counted how many leaves there were on the card and matched it to the correct number. At circle time, we like to count how many friends are in school that day. Sometimes we use our fingers to help us count.

Over the next few weeks, we will continue expanding our Fall book, and continue our exploration of the world around us during the Fall season.

Morah Chaya

Sukkot Holiday Hands-On Preparation

The first month of the Jewish year is full of holidays.

From our previous experiences we know that holidays are special days and therefore we need to prepare for this special time and do special things when the holiday is here.

Sukkot is the upcoming holiday and we are getting ready.

We went to visit the big sukkah that is outside our school. The sukkah has walls that go all around. It has a roof that is made from branches that when we look up we could still see the sky.

We were excited to be inside this new place called a sukkah!

We went back to our classroom to make a sukkah where we could play and act out the holiday.

We first measured the area where we were going to build.

We used a very long stick to measure the area and realized we needed a very big piece of paper the size of one stick plus some more.

We got our paper ready and marked off where we need to cut. We ready to make the walls for the sukkah.



A sukkah that we use for the holiday is usually not built from paper. Together we imagined what would happen to our paper sukkah if it was outside and the strong wind would blow or if it would rain.

But for our purpose to have an inside sukkah it would be a great way to make a sukkah.

The children used sticky tape to attach the walls together.

Tape can be tricky to hold and maneuver sometimes getting stuck to itself or our fingers.

It was important for us to try to understand how the tape works.


We were ready to collect branches to use for the roof of the sukkah. Together we went to the beautiful forest behind our school to see what we could find.

There were many branches to find. There were branches on the trees and also some fallen branches on the forest floor. The fallen branches were the most appropriate ones to use since we did not want to disturb or hurt any of the trees.

We found a very large branch- we were curious to see how tall it was. We measured it against our bodies and the Morahs. It was so tall that it was taller than us!







Here are our findings.

We are ready to go back to the classroom to use the branches for our sukkah.






Where is the roof?

It is up.

We tried to reach as high as the roof to place the branches on top.











Now we were ready to make decorations.

We used shiny paper called silver foil to color and then rip to small pieces. This turned out to be a beautiful effect. ripping the silver foil is a great activity to strengthen our little muscles in our fingers. Tearing is also an introduction to understanding the use of scissors.

With our sukkah ready and decorations in place we are ready for the holiday to begin.

song:

tune: London Bridge

Sukkot is a holiday, a holiday, a holiday,

Sukkot is a holiday a special day.

Happy Sukkot

Morah Batsheva

The holiday Rosh Hashana the Jewish New Year will soon be here.

In class, we first began to discuss that holidays are special days, to illicit within each of us a sense of joy and excitement for these times. A special time is approaching! Knowing there are special days, there are special things we can do to celebrate the day as well as things we can do prepare for its arrival.

That is what we have been doing together in class. We do this by involving ourselves in tangible ways to prepare for the holiday, act out the holiday rituals and learn holiday songs.
On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the Jewish New Year. In the new year we wish for ourselves, friends and family a “Sweet New Year,” and so we involve ourselves with many sensory reminders of this sweetness we would like to have. We eat sweet apples dipped in sweet honey, add sweet raisin to challah and dip into honey. As we eat these foods we bless ourselves and each other for a sweet year. We also go to synagogue and hear the sound of the shofar (ram’s horn), and have a festive meal to celebrate! As we learn about different themes throughout the year our focus is to give the children hands on experiences to involve themselves with tangible items so they can relate.

We have been using the symbols of Rosh Hashana to play different skill based games. This helps us have exposure to the symbols and learn various developmental skills as we play.

On Rosh Hashana we dip sweet apples into sweet honey and ask that we should all have a sweet new year. Apples come in different sizes and colors. Here we are sorting the different apples by grouping them in color.

We are counting and placing the number slices of apples that match the appropriate numbered honey jar.

On Rosh Hashana we eat round sweet challah and some people like adding raisins to their challah to make it extra sweet. That is what we are doing. We are using our fine motor skills to carefully pick up raisins, one at a time to place on our challah. Some children also tried doing this with tongs.

Rabbi Yitzchok joined our class to share with us his shofar. He blew the shofar for us to hear the sound that it makes. We too pretended to hold shofars to our mouth and make the loud sound. On Rosh Hashana we can go to shul and hear the Rabbi blow the shofar for everyone to hear.

We used air dry clay to make individual 'apple and honey plates' to use on our family's Rosh Hashana table. We rolled out the clay and used our hands like hammers to make it flat. We decorated it with some fun art sparkles and put it on our drying rack to wait patiently for it to dry. They are finally ready for us to use and take home for the holiday.

To find out more about the holiday and Chabad programming please check out the web site at www.chabadcental.org

Happy New Year, Shana Tova

Morah Batsheva

Welcome everyone to a new school year for you and your child at Zimmer Preschool.

With the new year comes a new classroom, new group of friends, new schedule and a new teacher. With so much newness it takes time and care to settle in. During this transition time the focus is to help each child feel comfortable, safe and loved so their emotional needs are met.

Together we have been busy acclimating ourselves to what it means to be in school. In doing this we are spending time in all the fun places both inside our classroom and outside getting to know the wonderful things there are to do in school.

To help us feel comfortable in our space and to get to know each other we have pictures of our family in our cozy library area of the classroom. The children have access to look at their pictures when they want some comfort. While looking the children like to point out and tell each other the different family members in the photos.

To help us get to know the other children in the class, we have special group meeting times throughout the day where we have a good, relaxed time while being together. This is when we sing different hand motion songs together, songs that have our names inside, read story books and also puppet story telling.

Here are some photos of our first days in school.

Making food for ourselves and our friends to eat

in the dramatic play center.

Discovering the fun outdoors and the different activities and fun things there are to do outside.

Enjoying lunch time together as we
around the table and talk about our day.

We enjoy having Music and Movement

as we make music with the instruments

and move our bodies to the music.

Looking forward to getting to know your child and growing together with them in the year ahead.
Morah Batsheva

Welcome to Zimmer Preschool