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