Tu Bi’shevat higiya!

Welcome back from winter break! Your children adjusted really quickly to being back in the classroom and were excited to jump right back into learning! We kicked off with a discussion about the upcoming holiday of Tu Bi’Shevat. We talked about what trees provide for humans, animals, and the environment. We looked at our empty, frozen, snow-covered Canadian trees, and beautifully blooming almond trees in Israel, talked about the similarities and differences of Tu Bi’Shevat in Canada and in Israel, and then translated that learning into some beautiful art. Take a look!

an exploration of shapes

Here in JK we have started to explore the wonderful world of shapes! We started out with circle, triangle, square, and rectangle, counting their sides and corners, examining their symmetry, and learning their names in Hebrew and English. We added hexagon, in honour of snowflakes! Hearts, stars, and all kinds of polygons are next. One of the ways we learn about shapes is through games. Another is through song, and the class favourite: experimenting with different art techniques using various media. See photos below! As we expand our knowledge, we will add French to the mix.

Goodbye dear November…

Remeber way back when, on November 1st, we had a lovely guest (Dov) who made our November Weather Tracker? Well, here we are at the end of the month – wow time flies! We learned about the weather in English, Hebrew, and our favourite ended up being French! We love singing Quel temps fait-il by Alain Lelait.

Here is what we discovered:

November has a lot of different kinds of weather, usually more than one at a time, and it changes during the day! The most common weather was cloudy (nuageux). There was also a lot of sunshine (soleil) and wind (vent). There were some rainy days (pluie) and some snowy days (neige). There were no foggy days (brouillard). We added a rainbow (arc-en-ciel) because Ittay saw one!

A big thank you to Ittay for bringing in his weekend and PD Day weather tracker to add to our data collection!

the final product!

Using Hebrew letter stamps, JK decorated their latke platter to create a letter and name recognition game. On the back of each of their torn-paper latkes (which dried beautifully over the weekend!) is one Hebrew letter from their name, which they have to match to one of the golden letters on their platter. They’ve been practicing all morning and will bring them home before Chanukah!

something’s cooking in JK!

The past 2 days we’ve been experimenting with torn paper, water, and white glue to make “latke batter” We listened to Chanukah songs while we tore up a bunch of paper (some from our recycling bin!), added water, let sit overnight, and checked out what happened to it all this morning. Then, we squeezed out the water, mixed in white glue, smoothed it together, and shaped our “levivot” – one for each letter in our names, and set them out to dry … stay tuned for the final results next week!

Can you guess whose names these represent?

 

coming up…

For dress down day next Thursday, November 30 we will be having a JK pyjama day! Please bring your loonies and toonies to help support the Royal Canadian Legion.

Upcoming:

Friday, November 24: No School PD Day

Thursday, November 30: Dress down day (JK only PJ Day)

Tuesday, December 5 – Thursday, December 7: Scholastic Book Fair! (JK visits on Thursday, see flyer for more details)

Kindness Camels

Last week’s Parasha, Chayei Sarah, highlighted the Jewish value of Chessed – kindness, which is something we have been discussing and showing a lot of in JK! Earlier this week, we highlighted (low-lighted?) silhouetted decorated camels against beautiful watercolour sunsets. The reason for this is that in the Parasha, Rivkah (Rebecca) shows kindness by offering water not only to people, but to camels as well. Just as water fills up the camel’s hump, kindness fills up our hearts!