The Ganon and Gan children have been busy preparing themselves for fall and all it entails. We have been exploring leaves across the curriculum. From the changing colors, textures and observing with magnifiers in our science area, to patterning and measuring for our math activities, singing leaf songs, and constructing a class made book, "Our Leaves," for our language and literacy unit, the activities have been enjoyed and embraced by our enthusiastic young learners.

After a field trip to the Met Museum, our youngest students were able to experience "Autumn in the Woods" with the Met's indoor camping experience. Children learned about animals of the night, how they prepared for the cold winter months in their dens, as well as their physical changes to accommodate the cold weather. The children were then able to compare and contrast their own preparations for the colder weather with the animal's, and realized that there were many similarities that we share.

We're looking forward to our upcoming Pilgrim and Native American experiences which will conclude our exciting fall thematic curriculum.

Children began the study of the Hebrew alphabet with the letter "Shin." They learned common words beginning with Shin, sang songs and made two crafts - a "stained glass" Shemesh (sun) and a mosaic shofar For each letter, children create a visual reminder, learn new words, sing, dance, write, and make a new page for their Aleph-Bet book, decorating a large letter with an artistic clue:Balloon painting for Bet, tiny paper "Doobim" (teddy-bears) glued onto Dalet, plastic S'chach (greens) pasted on Samech's sukkot, Rosh (head) stickers added to Resh, and many more. We visited a Bet K'nesset for the letter Bet, made a paper bag Ari (lion) for Aleph, baked oogat shokolad (chocolate cake) for Ayin, fashioned clay yad-jewelry for Yud, stuffed paper tapoochim (apples) for Tav, and the list goes on. In addition to letter recognition, the Gan spends part of the day speaking Hebrew - learning the names of common words and using them in simple conversations: numbers up to 100, colors, parts of the body, members of the family, fruits and vegetables, and even many verbs in masculine and feminine. Each day the Gan is becoming more familiar with a Hebrew environment. They try to catch every word during Hebrew stories, are able to follow Hebrew directions, and are now even making their needs known in Hebrew: Anee Tzareech mispirayim (I need scissors), Anee rotzah lalechet laSherootim (I want to go to the bathroom).

With the passing of Simchat Torah, our formal Torah program is about to begin.We will illustrate the B'reishit story on the flannel board and paint a giant mural depicting each day of creation. By the end of the year, the Gan will be familiar with all of the Avot and Imahot, Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and will be able to articulate the personal qualities that have made them role models in our own time.

...AT KITAH ALEPH

In the first two months of school, Kitah Aleph has been engaged in all areas of literacy. The balanced literacy program includes frequent exercises and activities that serve to hone and build phonemic awareness. The students work daily with the short vowel sounds of a, e, i, o, and u and blend consonant vowel consonant combinations.These emergent readers continue to develop a sight word vocabulary of common words found in text. Every day they read from the Houghton Mifflin anthology and gain increased confidence, fluency and expression in reading. Kitah Aleph has weekly opportunities to write and illustrate in their personal journals. All students are emerging writers and compose phonetically readable text. When read to, students have explored the reading strategies of cause and effect, elements of a story, elements of nonfiction text and sequencing to gain a greater understanding and appreciation for literature.

The level of math ability of the Kitah Aleph students is amazing! Work in the area of mathematics at this level has included concrete experience with mathematical concepts prior to abstraction. The students are working on developing automaticity in addition math facts by engaging in a variety of activities and games. They are learning subtraction facts and regrouping in addition through concrete experience in this area, and are developing skills at reading, interpreting data from and creating bar and picture graphs. They are also working with tally marks and > and < signs. Kitah Aleph students are developing a sight vocabulary of common math terms and expressions such as "How many?", "All together", "more" and "less" through frequent experience with word problems using this terminology.

In Judaic Studies, Kitah Aleph is thrilled to be sailing through their new Tal Am curriculum. As soon as the CD player is turned on students are opening their booklets to the new page, singing (and dancing!) along with the songs and following the written directions before I have even opened my mouth. The program nicely balances phonetic decoding with whole-word reading, and skills are strengthening daily in both areas. We have "adopted" the ten fictional students of "Kitat Tal Am," and their winning depictions have inspired many spirited Hebrew conversations about their outfits and imagined personalities and antics. The students beg to read the wide-ranging selection from the Tal Am Sifriyah (library), booklets which they can now read on their own. The program has given us an opportunity to review classroom vocabulary, parts of the body, numbers, colors, weather, and words associated with fall, and to learn the twelve Hebrew months by heart, to the tune and motions of the Macarena.The other exciting news is "K'teev," Hebrew script. The class learns one or two letters a day, and is racing to finish all seven color-coded script booklets.

The holiday of Simchat Torah was our inspiration to begin the Torah curriculum. After our dramatic performance of B'reishit last year, we are creating posters for each day of Creation. This activity is preceded by Hebrew vocabulary activities and discussions about the concepts: What did Tohu VaVohu (chaos) look like? When was water created?
If the sun and moon were created on Day #4, what kind of light was created on Day #1? We are especially fortunate to have one of the Kadima aunties participate in these discussions, which not only offers an intergenerational dimension, but also adds a creative and loving touch to our class.

Rosh HaShanah was the inspiration for our first Social Studies unit, My Expanding Community. Motivated by the concept of "Cheshbon Nefesh," the soul-searching that the New Year instills, children located themselves against ever enlarging criteria: family, street, town, state, country, continent and world. We practiced mapping skills in each of these areas, and culminated the unit by making paper mache globes, an activity that was as much fun as it was messy. The exposure to various kinds of maps was an ideal introduction to the study of Christopher Columbus. After learning about his life and many attempts to receive money and ships, we tracked his journey to San Salvador, and made acrostic poems for the inside of an oceans booklet. The study of maps and Christopher Columbus has laid the groundwork for learning about our next group of voyagers, the Pilgrims.

...AT KITAH BET

Kitah Bet is excited aboutreading from the Houghton Mifflin anthology. Stories have included contemporary works including The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle and selections from the Mr. Putter and Tabby series by Cynthia Rylant and folktale classics such as the Enormous Turnip. Kitah Bet continues to develop and hone word study and spelling skills. They have explored how to make nouns plural in regular and irregular situations and they have worked with compound words and syllabication. They are developing reading strategies to attack more challenging words, including looking for root words, chunking and using context clues.

Kitah Bet works with concretely with materials to gain a conceptual understanding of the mathematical process involved in regrouping in subtraction. They are also working with the bead bar material to learn their multiplication facts. Kitah Bet enjoys the TERC games, especially Go Fish for addends that equal 10 and Close to 20. They will soon be moving into abstraction in subtraction and will begin multiplying with multi-digit multiplicands.

This fall, Kitot Aleph and Bet have studied many themes in science. They started the year by exploring bees. Students learned about bee anatomy, life cycle and hive community life. We also explored fall fruit including apples and pumpkins and learned about the life of these plants from seed to plant. Fall leaves were also an important area of focus. The students explored common leaf varieties in New England, such as maple, oak, hickory, sassafras and birch, and are beginning to be able to identify these leaves by shape and characteristics.

Recent work in the area of science, has been with land and water forms. The students are learning to identify capes, bays, islands, lakes, peninsulas, gulfs, straits and isthmuses. We have also explored volcanoes. We watched a model volcano erupt and have learned about the parts of volcanoes. Next we will explore mountains and rivers. We plan to make model mountains out of clay and label the parts and create booklets about parts of the river.

The children enter Kitah Bet with a good base in Hebrew reading, an oral vocabulary of common daily words, knowledge of Hebrew script and a budding ability to speak in full sentences. We have been sharpening and advancing these skills, from reading more complex text to writing original stories. For Sukkot students wrote fables about their lulav and etrog posters, endowing the "Arba'ah Minim," the Four Species, with unique personality characteristics and adventures. After visiting a bet k'nesset (synagogue) in Andover and viewing its beautiful Torah mantles, the students created their own felt and sequined mi'eelei Torah and wrote Hebrew mystery stories to go along with them: "Mifletset HaTorah" (The Torah Monster) and "The Case of the Missing Chagorah" (belt). They also wrote stories to accompany their sponge-art fall collages. The final products of all these writing projects are the result of a long process and lots of hard work: initial vocabulary acquisition, reading stories others have written, brainstorming setting, characters and plot, oral discussion and practice making sentences, writing the first draft and, finally, conferencing to edit the finished piece. When the posters and stories finally go up on the bulletin board, the students truly deserve a "Kol HaKavod!" for all they have accomplished in second-language learning.

The holiday of Simchat Torah was our inspiration to begin the Torah curriculum. After our dramatic performance of B'reishit last year, we are creating posters for each day of Creation. This activity is preceded by Hebrew vocabulary activities and discussions about the concepts: What did Tohu VaVohu (chaos) look like? When was water created? If the sun and moon were created on Day #4, what kind of light was created on Day #1? We are especially fortunate to have one of the Kadima aunties participate in these discussions, which not only offers an intergenerational dimension, but also adds a creative and loving touch to our class.