The Schoolhouse News
Cheshvan is here… Bring your raincoats and boots!
Volume III, Issue 6 October 23, 2009 Parshas Noach
UPCOMING DATES: Tuesday, October 27 at 7:30pm— First Parent Curriculum Night‐ Overview and Practical Life Friday, October 30 at 10am— Skokie Health Department administers H1N1 vaccines to children of families who wish to participate Motzei Shabbos November 14 at 7pm—RESCHEDULED! First Melaveh Malkah for moms on 8 principles of Montessori Philosophy
TOP LEFT: Noam, Esti, Avi and Gavriel build all four knobless cylinders at the same time! TOP RIGHT: Tova colors pictures of Noach’s tevah and then punches them out with a pushpin—a work designed by elementary student, Malkah. LEFT: Rivki concentrates on zipping her jacket.
TOP LEFT: Noam punches a shape of Asia to assemble a continent mao. Map making is a very popular work in Montessori preschool, as it not only allows a child to order his/her world, but also promotes special relation‐ ships and art/fine motor skills. TOP CENTER: David and Eliyahu work with the spindle box—an activity to teaches quantity and symbol from 0 to 9. TOP RIGHT: Ephraim stamps teen quantities into his kindergarten journal (i.e. 13, 15 , 16, etc.) after working with the teen board. LEFT: Binyamin forms works with the moveable alphabet. BOTTOM: Ella and Gabi grind coffee together.
LEFT: Chana Leah and Chana order the picture and objects tray that teaches the names of animals in sign language. CENTER: Esti practices scooping. RIGHT: Dovy twists bolts on the bolt board.
It always seems so amazing to me how fast time goes by once school really starts. To think that this is the end of the second week since we came back from Sukkos vacation truly is an example of how fast time goes by when you are busy. When it comes to each day I find it even more incredible how much can happen and be accom‐ plished in just seven hours. We started the week with a song set to old MacDonald: Tzadik Noach had a Taiva, e‐i‐e‐i‐o, and on that Tavia he had some… Each child had a chance to say which animal they would like to insert into the song and imitate the sound it makes. The next day we had a lesson about the story of Noach. The story was accompanied by props of a Taiva and animals, even Noach and his wife were on hand. In the afternoon we read a book by Eric Carle based on the story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The story recounts the reason that Noach chose the Dove. Some of the children have started working on making continent maps after being shown how to punch out simple shapes with push pins. Other children have really evolved, already, into pre‐readers and readers. Still others have gravitated toward the cultural and science sections. These children have been learning about living and non‐living things, vertebrates and invertebrates, and the parts of animals. We even had time for a birthday cele‐ bration this week, Happy Birthday David Gimelfarb. It is really nice to see the children moving into a rhythm. I would like to thank all of you for your patience while we have been working to hire another assistant. On Mon‐ day we have new assistant starting so our schedule and organization should be back on par by the end of the week. Between people leaving and being sick it has been very difficult. These difficulties have certainly been made easier by all those who volunteered to help and everyone’s patience. Finally, as cold and wet weather is now upon us please remember to not just bundle up your children but to label every piece of clothing. This applies primarily to outerwear but if you child frequently changes during the day for various reasons please label other layers of clothing as well. Gut Shabbos! All the best, Reb Moshe, Morah Miriam, Morah Libi
Elementary
ABOVE: We began our parsha highlights this week with the study of the ten generations from Adam to Noach (here we are construct‐ ing a family tree of Adam and Chava). The children each illustrated their own family trees (some even in Russian!) and we made a book of them for our class. RIGHT: In honor of our study of H‐shem’s creation of Adam and Chava and eventually the “Asher Yatzar” beracha, some children created illus‐ trations of the human body and its organs. Here Leora, Tali and Chavie pose with their life‐sized human body pictures. We have also begun the study of the fundamental needs of humans (i.e. food, clothing, shelter, transportation, defense, etc.). One of these is also communication—we will explore the history of writing in our next great lesson on Monday (with our study of Migdal Bavel).
LEFT: The children continue to be greatly excited by learning Hebrew each day with Morah Jeni. They are progressing through the nouns re‐ lating to our classroom environment (we are working to compile a com‐ prehensive list for your home prac‐ tice). Some children are now read‐ ing simple Hebrew books and com‐ posing/answering their own reading comprehension questions about the books in Hebrew. LEFT: Guyli and Malkah create a diorama to accompany their written report on the history of defense in ancient Egypt. Many of the children are now working on the “fundamental needs of humans” research and will present their pro‐ jects to the class when finished. Malkah and Guyli gathered natural materials from the park (and our supply cupboard) to create minia‐ ture bow and arraows, spears and other simple tools. Rabbi Zitter continues to meet with the children daily at the various lev‐ els of Chumash. Nearly all children are able to sing the trup marks aloud—ask your child! Some chil‐ dren are now beginning to complete more complex written exercises on the Chumash totally in Hebrew.
TOP LEFT: Esther reads her creative writing story about a girl named Esther who loved horses—we now have every lunch filled with author readings! TOP RIGHT: Malkah enjoys “guest teaching” in the preschool on Thurs‐ day, much to the enjoyment of the kinder‐ garteners. ABOVE: Sammy practices learn‐ ing the geometric solids. QUIZ YOUR CHILD ON THE CHUMASH MEMORY SYSTEM EACH WEEK...WAIT UNTIL THEY CAN SAY ALL FIFTY!
From Parshas Bereishis...you can review: 1 SUN 2 GLUE 3 TREE 4 DOOR 5 HIVE 6 STICKS In this parsha we have: 6 STICKS—(Silly story‐Noach gathered sticks to build a teivah and H‐shem shook a stick at the world to warn the people to do behave) or Noach built the teivah
7 HEAVEN—(Silly story‐water poured to the earth from the heavens) or H‐shem sent the mabul to cover the Earth
8 GATE—(Silly story‐the teivah lands upon Mt. Ara”rate” and the gate of the teivah dropped open so that Noach’s family could depart) or the teivah lands on Mt. Ararat and Noach’s family departs
9 WINE—(Silly story‐Noach drinks too much wine and be‐ comes uncovered, picture a rainbow pouring from a bot‐ tle of wine) or Noach makes the mistake of marrying his daughters and H‐shem sends the rainbow as a sign that he will never send another mabul
10 TOES—(Silly story‐the generations of Noach to Avra‐ ham all have big toes) or the ten generations from Noach to Avraham
11 DATE—will cover next week...
Music Corner
In choir everyone is getting really excited about our upcoming concert! The elementary class had several music sessions this week. In our Intro to Music Literacy class we continued the study of melody by exploring ascending and descending melodic pat‐ terns. We also worked on ear training by distinguishing Do‐Re‐Mi and Mi‐Re‐Do melodic patterns from other combinations of the first three notes of the scale. We also explored the concepts of beat, rhythm and tempo. To experience the feeling of inner beat we did an exercise where the children kept the beat by jumping into the colored hoops laid out on the floor. The challenge was to maintain a steady tempo and jump to the beat of the song. Next we sang the same song with a slower or faster tempo, while keeping the beat on the drum and jumping the hoops. When I asked the group what the term tempo means, they intuitively answered that “tempo is how fast the beat goes”. The impressive part was that I never verbally ex‐ plain the concept of tempo to them; instead, they were able to arrive at the definition after having experienced changes in tempo through movement. We also learned about rhythm and how it is distinguished from the steady beat. In our hoop jumping exercise we added another layer: while the feet were jumping to the beat of the song, the hands were supposed to clap the rhythm. This is a challenging task and our goal is rather to understand that beat serves as the foundation for the rhythmic pattern of the musical piece. We also identified the corresponding music notation symbols and the way they are related to each other in terms of timing. In our pre‐school music class we learned a new song called “Comes a bird”, although this is originally a Yiddish song, we sang it in English, while keeping some Yiddish words which the children could learn with ease. We chose the instruments which best matched the voices of different characters in the song, thus ex‐ ploring the musical concept of timbre. Different groups of chil‐ dren took turns playing their instruments while singing about their corresponding character in the song. I was happy to see that even some of the youngest members of our class were listen‐ ing closely and focusing on their part in the song. To study melody we played a singing game called “going up the escalator” based on the C major scale. The goal was to under‐ stand the concept of ascending and descending melodic patterns. The children especially enjoyed the part where everyone got to offer suggestions on what was to be sold on each of the “8 floors” (the steps of the major scale). We then improvised a song based on the major scale and all of the children’s ideas.
Next Friday, October 30th at 10am The Skokie Health Department will be offering the free H1N1 flu vaccine for those families who elect the service ONLY. Please read the attached information and turn in the consent form if you want your child included in the vaccine administration.