Happy Birthday Trees! :)

B"H

This Wednesday was the tree's birthday! How exciting! Well, how do you celebrate the birthday of the trees? After having a brief class meeting, we came up with a plan and right away put it into action. We decided that we should have a birthday party outside with our friends from the younger class and serve special fruit!

Our brief class meeting

Our friends wanted to first sketch out their design before actually making the platter

Arranging the dry fruit

Itta and Chloe chose to make a pattern with the green and purple grapes

Setting up...

Singing with our friends

Look at our beautiful platters!

We each served a friend in the younger class exactly what they asked for

Getting the right amount :)

Letter of the week- Chof!

B"H

We practiced shaping our Chof out of the wooden blocks that WE sanded down and painted!

When Chloe and Menachem realized they did not have enough blocks to make the large chof, they thought of a solution and used branches! Great improvising!

Painting tree bark for Tu B'Shvat

B"H

Over time, we have collected a nice amount of tree bark. Being that we are now in our Tu B'Shvat unit and have been learning about trees, we decided to paint some tree bark.

We found wood pieces to paint as well!

Berry count

B"H

Being that our friends in Gan Chaya have been thoroughly enjoying outdoors, we moved along with them. There is so much they can gain while outside, we figured we could put out some things to trigger their curiosity and get them thinking.

Our friends enjoy collecting little red berries that fall from one of the trees outside. We put out numbered jars so that they can organize them into the proper number in each jar as they collected.

Tracing our bodies

B"H

We are currently in our "All about me" Unit! We have been discussing the different parts of our bodies and the unique way we were created, different from everyone else. Our friends worked together to trace each others bodies in the art center. They are going to be working on this piece, adding in all the different limbs as we learn them.

Our little explorers

B"H

Here at Gan Chaya, we cherish our outdoor space and try to make the most of it. There is so much learning and discovering that goes on while the kids play outside, especially when left to figure things out on their own. When we as teachers/parents take a step back and just be an observer, we will notice that our children can achieve far more than we expected and we can clearly watch their minds solve problems and figure out situations.  

Being that we are lucky enough to have half our classroom outdoors, in the past few weeks we decided to let the children explore on their own. Closely followed by their teachers, the kids tried out one thing after another and worked as a team with their boundless creativity to come up with so many new inventions and discoveries! 

Here is just a peak :)

Enjoy!

Building with tree bark!

Wooden blocks that we made, painted and are now using

Concentration, determination

Mendy decided that safety goggles would be a good idea for his digging.

Team work!

Painting the blocks

Look at those joyful faces!

I did it!

Hey there!

Found giggling behind the trees :)

Rain clouds

B"H

At our sensory table, there were cotton balls in a bucket and water in a jar with droppers. Our friends explored filling the cotton balls with water and waited to see when it got full enough to start dripping out, just like rain coming from the clouds.