December 11th, 2015
The celebration of Hanukah started this week. We have been discussing how people around the world celebrate different things, in different ways and how anyone is entitled to celebrate anything they believe in. We spent this week learning about the different ways in which children celebrate Hanukah. We used our hands to create our own Menorah, where we had to count and how many candle flames we needed. We then worked together to create a paper Menorah, with eight candles and a “helper” candle that lights the others, on which we kept track of which day of Hanukah it was. Each day was just as important as the others, in that each day was a day to spend with family. Although children often receive a small gift on each day of Hanukah, that is not what the holidays are about. Because giving is often a part of the holiday season, we decided to make and give a gift to our friends at school and our families. Everyone worked super hard to do their best job possible, not only to create something out of many provided materials but also to sound out and spell the names of the people their gifts were going to.
Children at Hanukah like to celebrate by playing the Dreidal game, where they spin a top like toy and either give or collect coins/candy from each turn. We used paper templates to draw the symbols of the Dreidal, cut it out and piece it together. We used the Dreidal game to help us learn to play by the rules, not to be upset if we lost all of our coins to another (good sportsmanship), and the concept that two halves make a whole (something you can only take half of the coins, so we had to learn how to split them in half). The Dreidal game was a great way to practice our counting!
Elmo taught us how to use the Hebrew word Shalom to say hello to others and everyone worked really hard to grate potatoes to make the common Hanukah dish called Latke. Mmm it was tasty! We also used the word Latke to help us practice the sounds that letters make and to know that sometimes words have letters at the end that you cannot hear.
This week some of noticed that all days of the week end in the letters “DAY”. We took this opportunity to identify, sound out and build these letters. We have also been focusing on how to “read” from left to right, so that the letters we write and the words we read make sense.
This week we added two pieces of winter clothing to our life size paper person; boots and Santa snow pants. We practiced cutting straight and curvy lines, hole punching and threading yarn, as well as tracing and copying letters.
We have now started counting and writing down how many days until Christmas; remembering that teen numbers start with the number one and then listening for the second digit s sound to figure out what number came next. We have a very observant bunch here at Blooming Butterflies… it was noticed that when counting how many days are left until Christmas we were not counting the actual number on that day of the week but rather how many numbers were left until the 25th.
We have now learned about Hanukah. We can’t wait to learn about Kwanzaa!
Xoxo Miss Audra
The celebration of Hanukah started this week. We have been discussing how people around the world celebrate different things, in different ways and how anyone is entitled to celebrate anything they believe in. We spent this week learning about the different ways in which children celebrate Hanukah. We used our hands to create our own Menorah, where we had to count and how many candle flames we needed. We then worked together to create a paper Menorah, with eight candles and a “helper” candle that lights the others, on which we kept track of which day of Hanukah it was. Each day was just as important as the others, in that each day was a day to spend with family. Although children often receive a small gift on each day of Hanukah, that is not what the holidays are about. Because giving is often a part of the holiday season, we decided to make and give a gift to our friends at school and our families. Everyone worked super hard to do their best job possible, not only to create something out of many provided materials but also to sound out and spell the names of the people their gifts were going to.
Children at Hanukah like to celebrate by playing the Dreidal game, where they spin a top like toy and either give or collect coins/candy from each turn. We used paper templates to draw the symbols of the Dreidal, cut it out and piece it together. We used the Dreidal game to help us learn to play by the rules, not to be upset if we lost all of our coins to another (good sportsmanship), and the concept that two halves make a whole (something you can only take half of the coins, so we had to learn how to split them in half). The Dreidal game was a great way to practice our counting!
Elmo taught us how to use the Hebrew word Shalom to say hello to others and everyone worked really hard to grate potatoes to make the common Hanukah dish called Latke. Mmm it was tasty! We also used the word Latke to help us practice the sounds that letters make and to know that sometimes words have letters at the end that you cannot hear.
This week some of noticed that all days of the week end in the letters “DAY”. We took this opportunity to identify, sound out and build these letters. We have also been focusing on how to “read” from left to right, so that the letters we write and the words we read make sense.
This week we added two pieces of winter clothing to our life size paper person; boots and Santa snow pants. We practiced cutting straight and curvy lines, hole punching and threading yarn, as well as tracing and copying letters.
We have now started counting and writing down how many days until Christmas; remembering that teen numbers start with the number one and then listening for the second digit s sound to figure out what number came next. We have a very observant bunch here at Blooming Butterflies… it was noticed that when counting how many days are left until Christmas we were not counting the actual number on that day of the week but rather how many numbers were left until the 25th.
We have now learned about Hanukah. We can’t wait to learn about Kwanzaa!
Xoxo Miss Audra
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