school field trip to an apple orchard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

end of year - the blue room performed a theater piece

the very hungry caterpillar

Ming Ming played the caterpillar

looking for food

eating different kind of food

having her last salad

then turned into a chrysalis and then a beautiful butterfly (Julian - a boy - played the butterfly, cool!)

singing the last butterfly song.

thanks for Jessica who took a video and put it online. 

after the show, as most parents started to leave, the kids got ready for the rest of the school day.

 

this pic captures Arun's classroom quite nicely!

 

 

This green linen dress is the best thing that I have sewn so far. it is not bad isn't it?

The school year has thus ended officially for MM, she will start summer camp at Akiba next Wednesday.

school news

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...Blast Off! We have continued our travels in outer space this week with a trip to the center of the Earth and Mars. While learning about the planet earth, we talked about the idea of earth and the sun. We used a flashlight (the sun) and a globe to demonstrate the idea that when it is day time on one side of the earth, it is night time on the other side. We also reinforced this concept by creating an earth picture. We practiced our cutting skills with this project.

In honor of Martin Luther King's upcoming birthday, we had a discussion about Dr. Martin Luther King's accomplishments. We talked about how when Martin Luther King was a child, not everybody could play together or go to school together because of the way they looked or their skin color. This sparked a lot of discussion (including the fact that Martin Luther King was not an actual king) and led us to talk about what we can all do to make our earth and classroom a peaceful place. The class came up with some really great ideas on what they can do themselves to help others and the earth. You can see our responses on the wall outside of the classroom.

We had a very busy Shabbat this week. We started by brushing up on our german numbers with Sabine (Noah's mom). We were excited to hear a new story about the german colors too. Thank you Sabine for an exciting group time! After singing a few favorite Shabbat songs and enjoying soem challah, we took a trip over to the grade school side to meet with our 1st/2nd grade buddies. The blue room friends were so excited to meet with their buddies after hearing about this plan on Thursday. We were warmly greeted by our buddies as each 1/2nd grader took their blue room buddy by the hand and showed them the project that was planned for our visit. It was such a warm welcome by our buddies! Some of our buddies also made pictures and notes for the blue room friends. We worked with our buddies to come up with words for each letter of the alphabet. These words will be later turned into a alphabet book. Afterwards, we all met on the rug for a singalong with Mr. Salk and his guitar. We had a great visit with our buddies and can't wait until next time!

We have many recent projects on display outside of the classroom. Come check out our space ships and space stories outside of the classroom! Next week we will continue our our space journey. We will also talk about the upcoming Jewish holiday Tu B'Shvat (a celebration of trees).

reading about planets

 

why do we have day and night?

 

in the playground

with first and second grade buddies, and their teacher

 

watching a video of King's speech "I have a dream"

see, there is lava inside planet earth!

rocket ship

ice sculpture with salt as glue

School News

This week, the blue room children were challenged to create new friendships within the classroom for our buddy week. Each child was assigned a buddy. These buddies were children in the classroom who may not have“discovered” each other yet. Having a new buddy in the classroom gave children the chance to explore new friendships and bring new friends into their play. When we first introduced this idea to the class, there were many concerns about playing with new friends. By the end of the week, we saw everyone looking for their classroom buddies in the morning and inviting their buddies to play and sit next to them. We saw all blue room children stepping out of their comfort zones and trying new friendships this week. Even though our buddy unit has lasted one week, we know these new skills and relationships will last throughout the whole year!

Throughout the week buddies worked on special projects together and for each other. Children worked on creating portraits of their buddies. This was a change for children since we usually create self-portraits. We saw many children helping out their buddies by asking “What color do you want your hair to be?” or by standing up so their buddy could draw them more easily. Buddies also baked and decorated cookies for each other and made friendship necklaces or bracelets. Children did an amazing job throughout the whole week thinking of others before themselves!

This week we talked about the presidential elections and what it means to vote. We held our own Blue room election where children voted using ballots for which book they would like to read- “Duck for President” or “Arthur Meets the President”. “Duck for President” won with a two-point lead! We also asked the class what they thought were important things a president should do. Here are their responses:

“Make houses”- Asher

“Make ice cream”- Claire

“President should protect the people”- Ming-Ming

“He should make sure we are safe”- Olive

“He should give us a big scoop of ice cream”- Izzy

“He should take care of the whole America”- Danny

“He should give everyone joy”- DeHavilland

“He needs to make sure we are safe at school”- Julian

“He needs to be nice President”- Noah

“He needs to make sure sunshine on the buildings”- Julia

“He should give us clothes”- Leila

“He should go to New York to help clean up”- Charlotte 

* With the idea of thinking about others, the blue room has started to collect tzedakah (charity) every Friday before Shabbat. This week we learned about the student group called the Chesed Club. This middle school student group at Akiba is collecting money to donate to a small Jewish Day school in Brighton Beach, NY called Mazel Day School. This school was flooded from the storm Sandy and lost most of their supplies. The Blue room will be donating the their tzedekah money for this cause this Friday. You are welcome to send in tzedakah coins with your child this week to put in our class tzedakah box.

school

 

 

 

 

 

We run our own school!

After the official school year ended in June 3, Ming Ming has started her first summer camp at the same school. But Akiba summer camp is only for the morning (MM's teachers kindly kept her for nap time, so I pick her up at 1pm instead), and so last week we started our own greenwood summer camp for the afternoon.

Students included: Nourit and Avi, Oscar, Lucas, Ming Ming and Anissa.

Monday afternoon is music class with Liz. Tuesday is with Laura, and then it is Helen, me, and Anna for the rest of the week. The initial idea was to introduce different national cultures as we have Korean, Chinese, German natives among the teachers. But as things evolved we improvised and it ended up more about the different themes.

The theme for the first week is Heroes. The kids were introduced to a kid who did a heroic act (kids can be heroes too), a Korean emperor who invented the Korean writing system and a brave and strategic general, a chinese female warrior Fa Mulan, and a East German kid who saved a Russian pilot during the war.

The theme for the second week is food. The children baked banana bread with Laura and talked about food groups and healthy eating habits. They learnt about typical Korean food and table manners with Helen. I did an economics class with them, giving them each two dollars and taking them to the produce market two blocks away. Each kid had to choose a fruit to buy but couldn't spend more than two dollars unless someone else was willing to lend some money. We looked at different fruits, tried to find their name and price, weight them, and at the end each kid paid for their own purchase. The kids were super excited about having money and paying on their own. But it was quite a scene shopping with such a big group of kids and having them line up with two dollars each. Luckily Hyde Park produce is a local store and we shop there all the time, the cashier was very nice with all the kids.

MM with the korean meal that they had made. 

my turn as a teacher. I gave them popsicles before heading to the store. It was an extremely hot day, more than 100F. 

Lucas picked a coconut from the store. the kids could not wait to try but none, except Anissa, liked it.

sharing the fruits they bought for snack. 

making popsicles with carrots and raspberries.

the afternoon ended with sprinkler and water slide.

On friday, under Anna's guidance, they drew birthday cards for Max and started putting together a dinner party for the parents.

and we celebrated Max's b-day in the evening.

funny faces while Max giving a birthday speech..

Mike was responsible for the beautiful cake! pancake cake (crepes)

but the kids made the bees in this one!

Saturday morning, as a special event, we headed for the farmer's market to taste some fresh fruits  from the farm. the peaches were divine. 

soldiers march from the nutcrackers.

stopped at Liz and Mike's garden

a sprinkler in the park, of course the kids could not miss the fun.

we had Mihna over for dinner.