B”H
Dear Parents,
The Parsha this week helped the Yellow Room Friends understand what uniforms can tell us. They instantly recognized the uniforms of many community helpers as well as others. Police, firefighters, football players, ballerinas etc. all wear a ‘uniform’ and it helps us understand what these people do. The Kindergarten Wise Ones then saw a picture of the Kohen Gadol. They could tell from his uniform that he is something special. They learned which clothes are worn by a Kohen Gadol and which are worn by a regular Kohen. The Yellow Room children know that even though we don’t have the Mishkan or the Beis Hamikdash, we can visit a Shul on Shabbos. When we go there we, too, wear special and nicer clothes.
The Yellow Room focuses on opportunities to show Ahavas Yisroel (loving another as yourself) to others. It was interesting to them that Hashem chose Aharon, Moshe’s older brother, to the the Kohen Gadol. Aharon was happy for his younger brother, Moshe, to be chosen by Hashem to be the leader of the Jewish People. Hashem chose Aharon because he loved peace and pursued peace. The Yellow Room Friends sometimes ask themselves if they are acting like Aharon would act to his friends.
The Yellow Room Artists finished their Challa covers utilizing eye hand coordination to stay in the lines with fabric markers. Creating the Challa trays was a fun sensory activity when the Mod Podge stuck to their hands and they had fun peeling it off! Even though that wasn’t the point of the craft it had its extra side fun benefits!
Shabbat Shalom!
Morah Perline
The Yellow Room is actively involved in integrating their knowledge of letter sounds into learning. Vygotsky said that children are “active contributors to their own development” and through social interaction co-construct higher level knowledge. The children in the Yellow Room have enjoyed helping one another to understand the work/play they are doing by explaining work or providing a different perspective to the play in which they are involved.
Mae explains positions-first, second, third, etc. to Angie
The children are so proud as they play (and tell Morah or a peer) and notice things in play that start or end with a letter sound on which they have been working. They also enjoy when they see something in a book of which they have done or on which they have been working. The children recently started to decorate and build rubber band racers. When Leanna was reading a library book, she noticed the rubber band racer, and proudly brought it to class saying, "Look! We made this." The learning through play and active participation is learning that settles in their long term memory and is retrievable when learning new, related concepts.
Playing, listening and patience are all important as the children grow and move to school years. Playing games with rules provides practice for children while playing and having fun. During Bingo the children had to accomplish their learning in multistep processes. They had to listen for the numbers to be called and recognize the oral and written version of the number, then place a gem on the number called, and finally observe to notice when they achieved three in a row responding by saying bingo. This doesn’t seem like a lot to adults who have been doing multistep tasks for years, but for children, they are fully engaging their brain function including self regulation to accomplish these tasks. If it still seems easy, do an experiment and try learning something new in a subject area that is not natural to you. (chemical engineering, painting a landscape picture if you are not familiar with painting). These processes are new to children and they are not only learning the subject matter, but they are learning the processes involved in each new activity.
Shyli plays with Carmel from the Purple Room and Naveed plays with Ronan. They coordinate with one another to create and follow agreed upon rules.
