Toddler Room

Large group was centered around Passover this week. After reading Passover we played our own game of "Find the Afikomen." Friends frantically searched our classroom trying to be the first to find the broken piece of matzah. As a group, friends were happy for Parker and Linus as they were the big winners this round. We intend to find the afikomen several more times over the course of next week. We pretended to be tired Jewish people one day. After Pharaoh (Clare) told us we could all leave Egypt, we took turns putting our belongings into a back pack in a hurry. Each friend was able to crawl through a box pretending they were crossing the Red Sea. This activity was a lot of fun and involved quick thinking on how to manipulate the body and get through the box quickly. Once on the other side of the Red Sea, we celebrated our freedom with our own Seder dinner.

 

Nursery Room

We wanted to continue to do fun Passover activities during small groups. Since our Elijah cups, pillows, and Seder plates were already complete we branched in a different direction. Some activities this week included Red Sea paintings, Baby Moses baskets, and building pyramids! 

 

Using blue and green paint, textured paint brushes, and shaving cream friends painted a large sheet of paper that was pre-taped down the middle. It created a beautiful water scene. Once dried, the tape was pulled off and each child had their own picture of the parting of the Red Sea. They completed them by drawing people in between the water, it was amazing. 

 

Paper plates and strips of construction paper were used for weaving. It proved to be a tricky task trying to weave the pieces of paper through slits on a small paper plate, but we did it! The plates were then shaped so that they look like a basket that baby Moses could have used. 

The IPad helped us out with our pyramid buildings as the class was provided with photographs of Egyptian pyramids. They then used wooden blocks, hollow blocks, or Magnet Tiles to build their own pyramids. Everyone was creative and each pyramid was unique! 

 

Pre-K Room

On our next two walks we went out on different searches -- on Thursday we searched for shapes and on Friday we hunted for letters and numbers. We hope to continue these walks as the weather continues to warm. We think it provides such a great opportunity not only for the children to enjoy the warm weather, but also to notice all the changes taking place as spring continues its march towards summer. Additionally, when our walks have a specific purpose they provide learning opportunities across the academic spectrum.

Even with all that, we managed to squeak in a few small group activities this week. In one two-day activity we made charoset. Each small group made a different version, inspired by recipes from different countries. We then undertook a taste test and every child was given a token to vote for their favorite. We then used stickers to graph the results. In another activity, we used some of the images from our haggadahs to collage various aspects of the Passover story.