February 13
During our Morning Work Time, your children had the opportunity to work with rolled clay and pipe cleaners. I overheard and observed your children creating a variety of imaginative pieces. Emma, after carefully pushing in a number of short pieces of a pipe cleaner, declared; “I made a sun.” Asher and Ben, each using and flattening three pieces of clay created “turtles.” Working with clay allows your children to not only be creative and imaginative, it also helps to strengthen fine motor skills that are needed for writing and becoming independent in regards to dressing, toileting, and eating, and is a calming and soothing art material. Our writer’s table was busy as well this morning. Using the dry erase boards, I watched your children “practicing” to write letters and creating art. Yael “made a rollercoaster” while Mika “made a dolphin.” Lelo wanted to look at the hyacinth bulb again and while doing so, we both carefully removed the remaining dirt off the plant onto a piece of paper. I observed that Lelo enjoyed creating patterns with his fingers using the dirt from the plant. This was similar to practicing and tracing letters with sand, rice, shaving cream, pretzel sticks, etc. that we have used previously. Using any material that your children like the feel of can be used to learn and to shape letters!
At the playground today, we took our first class photo! Your children, when I normally observe and photograph them, aren’t aware that I have my camera in hand. This time, when I said smile and wave, it was with great joy and laughter!
During our first Morning Meeting, we used our felt board as a visual aide to look at and to think about patterns. Merav also used the felt board to start teaching the names of animals. Using the song, “Old McDonald,” your children learned: cat (chatul), dog (kelev), and cow (parah).
