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