High Holidays Unit PN2

HIGH HOLIDAYS UNIT 

PN2 Morah Dominique and Morah Jackie

Wow! We have done so many AMAZING learning opportunities throughout this beautiful unit that contemplates family heritage, traditions, and the unique perspective of a child! And the most important part of all of it was to see every child's smile and learning that took place in their minds and bodies throughout the whole process. Therefore, if you are ready to follow us through this fantastic world of discoveries just scroll down the page and enjoy it!

For Rosh Hashana, we explored drama and pretend play with the holiday's symbols; created our own shofars out of golden tissue paper; explored our senses with apple stamping, colouring and footprints; discovered the taste of honey and how honeybees look like during our guest speaker presentation: the beekeeper; painted jars to our lovely families, sorted the different colours of apples with blocks/pom poms; and sang songs together!

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5441314f54553d0d0a&blogview=true

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5441324e44593d0d0a&blogview=true

The idea of introducing Yom Kippur to our age group was to focus on their self image, sense of self and emotion regulation. Based on their interests, we implemented provocations that included our paper flip flops, the story and art of Jonah and the whale, catching fish, paper foil mirror creation, and a white collage to represent the sense of reflection. 

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5441324e54593d0d0a&blogview=true

When it comes to Sukkot, our main purpose was to recreate the holiday feeling of family, sense of belonging, and life celebration with all the children during the week. We had the opportunity to provoke their curiosity with a variety of open-ended materials to build their own sukkahs as well as to expand their knowledge with different shapes of buildings, numeracy and concepts like inside and outside. Furthermore, we visited our big Sukkah and observed its structure which amazed everyone of them!

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5441324e6a633d0d0a&blogview=true

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5445774d54553d0d0a&blogview=true

Last but not least, we celebrated Simchat Torah by creating beautiful flags made out felt and stickers so children could have the chance to develop their sensory motor integration and expressive language with new words. We also brought the holiday celebration outside when we pretended to be flags all around by wiggling our bodies and running together. 

https://desktopapp.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459344f5445774d54673d0d0a&blogview=true

Pre-Nursery 1 High Holidays

Shalom Pre-Nursery 1 Families,

Rosh Hashanah

We had an amazing month of October as we explore the High Holidays, we take a closer look into the meaning of each holiday. We focused on being kind to each and doing a Mitzvah a day!

Here are some of the highlights:

We have explored the insides of an apple and Pomegranate, observed the seeds and even counted up to 5 seeds in one of our apples. We discovered the hidden star that can be found inside of an apple, and decided that we had to create some beautiful art work in hope that the uniqueness of the apple and pomegranate would be captured in our art and crafts. The Pre-Nursery children had the chance to further enhance their sensory skills by dipping red apples into fresh sweet honey. We spoke about where Honey came from and how important it is to know the difference between a 'Bee' and a 'Wasp' because these two do two very different things and we should not bother them while we play. We explored some real honey combs and even got to try some real honey fresh from the honey combs.


Apple stamping

Dip the apple

Apple & Pomegranate Weighing 

Apple Tasting

We are very proud of all of the children, and are very impressed with how smooth most of the transitions have been going. In class we have prepared some honey dishes with the children along with some beautiful pomegranate art. They seem very excited to celebrate Rosh Hashana at home, as we welcome a new year, filled with new beginnings and lots of love. During the week we had the opportunity to touch a real Shofar, and practiced blowing it, we spoke about its texture, it's colour, and used all of our senses to fully explore the Shofar.


Honey Bee sensory Bags

 Find the Bees in the beehive

 Add the seeds to the apple

 Q-Tip painting Rosh Hashanah activity page

 Making our Shofars

Song:'Shana Tova' (Hebrew Song)
          'Blow The Shofar'
          'Old McDonald Had a Farm' (Class Favorite)

Books: On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,'
            'A Touch of The High Holidays,'
            'It's Shofar Time!' and
            'What Do You See on Sukkos.'
         

Poems: 'Way up high in the apple tree'

Yom Kippur
Friendship

 Dr. Shira made sure to check everyone's vital  signs the class, children with runny noses were asked to get a tissue and washtheir hands.

After reading the story of Jonah and the Whale, we decided to make our own props to tell the stories to our families at home.

 We created our own slippers for Yom Kippur
                        

We are decorating the different types of food to be seen in the whale's tummy for our Jonah and the whale story props

Making the whale

 Colouring jonah

 A look at our finished whale

Dancing to the 'Let's be friends song'

Remembering the importance of the Torah, and spreading the love to all.

In honor of Yom Kippur we appreciate our family and friends, we remember to be kind and share. Here Shira and Ayala admiring each other after getting matching braids.

Sukkot


Making decorative pieces for our Sukkah

 Our Sukkah is complete and we love it!

This week was very eventful, and full of celebration, we had an amazing time in school, the Children have begun to settle into their daily routines. We are continuing to build those meaningful relationships with the children and their peers, and inspiring new friendships by making a buddy system, and labeled individual chairs so each child can have a sense of belonging within their environment.

Thank you for such a fun Unit, full of exploring and learning, now it's time to dive into the next unit.

Morah Lauren  & Morah Galit 🤗