Chalav students celebrated Israeli Independence Day with food and festivities. Chalav children spoke Hebrew with our Shaliach, Omri, and then joined the rest of MWJDS, teachers and students together, to partake of some delicious Israeli food. The children especially enjoyed the blue and white birthday cake.
Chalav students have been busy this week honing their tefillah skills in preparation for out upcoming Siddur ceremony. In Writers’ Workshop, they have been writing about tefillah. Topics for writing and discussion have included where children like to pray, why we pray and which tefillot they most enjoy. The children have also been busy finishing up their shape poems. Next week we will begin a new unit in Writers’ Workshop on writing non-fiction.
In Fundations/Word Study, we have been practicing reading and writing words with long and short vowels. So far, we have focused on words with long and short a, long and short i and long and short o. Next week we will spend more time with long and short e and u words. Long u words can be especially tricky as the letter u sometimes makes an “oo” sound (as in rule) and sometimes sounds more like u (as in the word, mule).
In Math, we have continued our review of addition and subtraction facts. In addition to single digit addition and subtraction, the children have been practicing adding and subtracting 10 to numbers between 1-100.
In Readers’ Workshop we have begun focusing on non-fiction books. Students examined and compared non-fiction and fiction books. We learned that non-fiction books often contain items that are not found in fiction. Examples of these items include: actual photographs or realistic illustrations, an index, a glossary and a section with places to look for additional information. Fiction includes made-up characters like talking animals and such genres as folk tales and fairy tales. The children seemed to especially enjoy a non-fiction book we read about butterflies and moths. We will continue to explore non-fiction books in the coming weeks.
Hamorah Dalia helped the children become bunnies to enhance one of their favorite Hebrew songs.
Shabbat Shalom,
Hamorah Joanne