October 11, 2024 |

Grade K – Gan Class Update 10-22-17

Posted on October 23, 2017

Hello Gan Class Families!

I hope that you were able to take advantage of this weekend’s beautiful weather!

Our day started with students working on their This Week On Shabbat illustrations.  Now that we have had a few classes, this routine has become familiar to students.  While they illustrated, they chatted together about all the different things they did this week. It was really great to see them all sitting together and sharing.

In the Sanctuary for Tefillah, we sat in the very front row, practiced opening the siddur correctly and following along with the pages.  We learned a new prayer today where we pretended to be playing different instruments and practiced Modeh Ani and the Shema.  

Today was our first day using our workbooks in the Gan Class.  All of our learning will be reflected in these books and they will remain in the classroom until the end of the year.  Today we created the first Torah Story illustration.  As you may remember, last week we enjoyed the story of Creation.  This week we revisited this story to be reminded of all the details.  Students were then able to draw a picture that will help them remember the main idea of this story.  

This month, our lessons with Bar are focusing on what it is like to be a child in Israel.  Today, we played a game called King of Movement. One student was the guesser, hiding their eyes and ears with Bina while Bar chose a King.  All the students followed the movements of the King while the guesser tried to figure out who the King was.  It was a very fun game that we even played again later in the day because we loved it so much.

There were no new letters today.  Instead we practiced the five letters we already know as part of our Aleph Bet Centers.  There were three activities today.  Bina helped students play Aleph Bet Adventure, a game much like Candy Land.  Students were creating illustrations for our vocabulary words in their workbooks with Ann.  At the third station, students constructed their very own Israeli degel.  We will have Alph Bet Centers periodically and the activities will change so that students can experience the Aleph Bet letters in different ways throughout the year.

We were super excited to welcome our FIRST mystery reader to our classroom.  Our Mystery reader read The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak.  Fun facts – B.J. Novak is from Newton, MA.  He is Jewish and attended Solomon Schechter Day School through 8th grade. This silly story was a crowd favorite!  We can’t wait to see who the mystery reader will be next week.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the Gan Class.

Have an excellent week!

Michelle