Kitah Gimmel
Just after Pesach break, we had some visitors: baby chicks that one Kitah Gimmel student and her family shared with the class. The student demonstrated how to hold a chick, and anyone who wanted was given a turn. Two by two they sat on the floor with a lap towel and she handed over a chick. Having pets come and visit is a great way for children to gain a better understanding of what “taking care” of a pet means.
We have some other visitors as well: monarch caterpillar larvae. We’ll be following and charting the change from day to day until they turn into butterflies. The children witnessed this metamorphosis last year in Kitah Bet. This is truly a miraculous event to see, no matter how many times you have seen it before. We will encourage the children to become scientists and make observations and hypotheses about the changes they see. Each day, a child will draw a small picture recording what they see. We will keep a time line to track how long it takes our larvae to grow larger and the metamorphosis into butterflies. We will encourage the children to ask questions about what they observe. They may have “homework” to help them find out the answers. We will also make some caterpillars of our own. When the metamorphosis is complete and we have (hopefully) some butterflies, we’ll have a release ceremony for the butterflies and the children who helped raise them.
Kitah Bet
With Passover done we geared up for Yom Ha’atzmaut or Israel’s birthday. The curriculum around Yom Ha’atzmaut fits perfectly into our class’s world/diversity focus. We made an artistic rendition of the Israeli flag, as we have done with other countries we visited. There is also a wealth Israeli cuisine easily made by little hands: humus, falafel and Israeli salad are favorites. On the actual day of Yom Ha’atzmaut, we prepared and ate these Israeli foods for snack. The special thing about Israel’s birthday is that Israel is a place that has already been interwoven into the children's preschool experience. It is more familiar to the children than some other countries we have explored, yet also with a myriad of facets left to be discovered.
We also took a plane ride to Israel. After we “landed” in Israel, the children went through “customs” and stamped their passports. We continue to explore and discover the beauty of Israel, the diversity of the people, the Jewish history and the land. As we discussed the people of Israel, we discovered that, just like us, the people there are many different colors.
To continue building knowledge regarding diversity, we embarked on another project involving our skin tones. A few months ago, the children made outlines of their hands. Using skin tone colored crayons, they colored the inside of the hand with the color(s) that they felt best matched their skin. All the while, we engaged in discussions regarding our similarities and differences. This week, we had the children mix paint colors (white, yellow, brown, black and red) to find their skin tone and then made footprints with that color. The children have had some wonderful conversations as they tried to figure out the right mix of colors to match their own. One comment from a child, “Isn’t that funny, we all got the same colors in us!” And therein is the beauty of this project! We have a spectrum of colors and ethnicities in our community but we all do share many similarities as well.
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| The Kitah Bet children on the plane to Israel! |
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| Stamping the passport upon arrival. |
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| Mixing paint to find just the right skin color. |
Kitah Alef
The children have started telling jokes recently. This may sound like a small milestone of development, but there are so many nuances that go into humor that this is no small feat. When you first hear a joke, you need to understand what is being said and why it is funny. In order to tell a joke, you need to either remember one that you have already heard (and hopefully get the sequence correct) or improvise, sometimes working within the framework of an existing joke (i.e. knock, knock jokes).
Since the beginning of the school year, the children's language skills have improved tremendously. They are speaking in longer sentences, their speech clarity has improved, and their comprehension has grown by leaps and bounds. A college professor once told his linguistics class that you have to master a language first in order to then be able to flout the rules. Kitah Alef children are flouting the rules of joke telling left and right with varying degrees of success, but always to their own delight. Earlier this week, we started telling “jokes” at lunch one Tuesday. Here are a few:
“My joke is owls.”
“I've got a joke about dinosaurs. Rawr!”
“Why didn't the dolphin fly over the ocean? Because then it would be a bagel.”
“Knock, knock. (Who's there?) Mr. Nobody!”
“Knock, knock. (Who's there?) Banana. (Banana who?) Banana I didn't day orange!”
These are not copyrighted, so feel free to borrow one or more to liven up your next cocktail party or board meeting.
On another note, the Kitah Alef children have been reaping the benefits of warmer weather by playing with water in the yard. Though it may look like the children are simply getting messy, they are in fact growing in every aspect of development. On particularly warm days, we fill up the barrel in the yard with water. Once it is full, the children grab buckets, measuring cups and other containers and go get water themselves. Walking with a bucket full of water not only increases physical development but also improves balance. Eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills and hand grasp-skills needed for future writing are also facilitated by sand or water play. During water play, children investigate (“What happens when I put sand in water?”), observe (“I made mud!”), and problem solve (“Now I’m soaking wet. Better stand in the sun until I dry”). They also explore cause and effect, understand measurement properties and use their imagination to create exciting new things. We have seen many mud cakes, mud cups of coffee, and mud ice cream.
Throughout the year we have been talking about the benefits of water to our planet. When the new trees were planted in the yard, we discussed how water helps them to grow. At snack and lunch, we talk about how water helps our bodies to grow. We have had many conversations about how we need to be careful with our water, especially in the middle of a severe drought, and that it is important not waste it.
