Morah Linda Kagan and Morah Zenia Cohen

November 2-6, 2009

Dear Parents,

    This week in Kindergarten we introduced the letter D, as in duck. We made a duck cover for our “D” folder, and the children completed many different D activities to put inside. At our centers the activities included finding and drawing all the “D” objects in the letter box, completing a dot-to-dot page and solving the mystery picture. We also learned about dominos, and the children had a chance to play the game in small groups. Be sure to ask your child what he/she ate for our special Friday snack.
    On Wednesday the Kindergarten hosted a special visitor. Firefighter Linda Brady from the Skokie Fire Department spoke to both classes about fire safety. She reviewed how to call 911 in an emergency and talked about “stop, drop and roll.” We were also reminded to pass on the tip of changing the batteries in your smoke/carbon monoxide detectors when you switch your clocks from Daylight Savings Time. If you forgot to do that last weekend, it is not too late!
    Our Ivrit program is off to a great start. Morah Cheryl’s lessons are each Monday and Thursday morning. The children play games, sing songs, and listen to books read in Ivrit. Additionally we are completing an alef-bet book which will be sent home at the end of the year. This week Morah Cheryl introduced the letter “gimmel” as in “gamal” (camel).
    During the month of Cheshvan we are joining with the entire school in a focused study of Shabbat. This week we read several Shabbat books including The Littlest Candlestick and Dinosaur on Shabbat. We talked about why people call the seventh day by different names, Shabbat vs. Shabbos, and learned that both are correct, as one is in Ivrit and one is in Yiddish. We worked on a special Shabbat project and learned several Shabbat songs.
    The parsha for this week is Vayera, which tells the story of Abraham, Sarah, and the three malachim. In our class we had our own version of Abraham’s tent and the children enjoyed dramatizing a play of the parsha story. Our parsha discussion this week focused not only on the story, but also on two of the mitzvot in Vayera: Hachnassot Orchim and Bikur Cholim. Your child’s special class phone book is intended to assist in calling classmates, especially when they are not well and need some good cheer.
    This was Ethan’s Getting to Know You Week. Ethan has two brothers, Evan and Ezra, likes the color blue, and enjoys eating chicken and mashed potatoes. Ethan wants to be a police officer when he grows up so he can drive fast in the police car. Many thanks to Ethan’s mom, Dr. Comrov for joining us and providing the birthday cupcakes.
    We were very excited this week to celebrate another joyous event. Mazal tov to Sarah Friedman and family on the birth of her new baby brother.

For your information:
    1. Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, Nov. 23 and Monday, Nov. 30. Please be sure to sign up on-line to arrange a time that is convenient for you. We look forward to meeting with everyone to keep you informed and to answer any questions about your child’s progress.
    2. Please remember to call or email us if your child is absent from school. This is
especially important in the case of contagious diseases such as strep throat, chicken pox, etc. We make every effort to notify all the parents as soon as we are informed.
    3. Next Monday, Nov. 9, is the scheduled date for the administration of the H1 N1
vaccine. Kindergarten children are the first ones on the schedule and parents need to be present when the vaccine is given.

                Shabbat Shalom,
                Morah Kagan and Morah Cohen

October 26-29, 2009

Dear Parents,

This week we introduced our newest letter E as in egg. As this is the first of the vowels you should be aware that we concentrate primarily on the short vowel sound. While we do
explain the long vowel sound (it is the name of the letter) most activities will use the short sound of the letter. We made our egg folders and talked about how one would cook sunny-side up eggs. Additional E activities included writing the letter in our workbooks, graphing favorite ways we enjoy eating eggs, and finding the letter E in a silly sentence. After reading the book Chickens Aren’t The Only Ones the children worked cooperatively on egg puzzles to determine which animals were hatched from eggs and which were not.

Continuing with letter E in the area of science, the children participated in their first experiment. The question was asked whether an egg could get into a bottle without the use of hands, fingers, or other body parts. The children talked about various ways this could be accomplished and different things that might happen, and then watched and evaluated exactly what took place. The class learned about what sustains fire (oxygen), and learned about vacuums. Be sure to have your child explain how our “egg experiment” worked.

    Of course the biggest excitement this week was the visit by Rabbi Shlomo Amar. The children had spent several days practicing a special welcome song for the Rabbi and everyone was delighted with their very brief performance.

    The parsha this week is Lech Lecha, where we learned how Avraham left his home to go where Hashem had directed him. We discussed how his name was changed from Avram to
Avraham and how Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah.We learned of Hashem’s special blessing to make Avraham’s children “as plentiful as the dust of the earth and the stars in the heavens.”

For Your Information:
    Parent Teacher Conferences are scheduled for Monday, Nov. 23 and Monday, Nov 30.
Sometime next week you will be notified when the Reservation System will be opened for you to make your appointment. Please note that when requesting an appointment for our class, you must sign up under Mrs. Kagan’s schedule. Both Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. Kagan will be at the conferences and are looking forward to meeting with you.

                    Shabbat Shalom,
                    Morah Zenia Cohen and Morah Linda Kagan

October 19-23

This week in Kindergarten began with our field trip to Wagner Farm in Glenview. The
children pumped water for the cows to drink, took corn off the cob by hand and then used a hand grinder to grind the corn for chicken feed. Later they fed corn to the chickens and also saw pigs and horses. Returning to the “farmhouse,” the children helped make butter from cream and snacked on what they had made. Many thanks to Yosef’s mom, Dr. Oliff, Jak’s mom, Mrs. Karesh, and Alexandra’s mom, Mrs. Schreiber, for accompanying us on our trip.

This week we continued learning about the letter F. The children keep adding to our
collection of words beginning with the “F” sound and our list is very long. On Tuesday we
introduced “independent learning centers.” Children can work at their own pace completing an assortment of specifically designed lessons. This week our centers included identifying and
labeling F objects, completing a “Favorite Fruit” Graph, a small motor center where the children cut “hands” for our bulletin board “keshet” (rainbow) and a design center where the children built a “teva” (Ark) from magna tiles.

During singing time on Tuesday afternoon Morah Cohen brought an instrument that also starts with the “F” sound: a flute. She showed us how she assembles the three pieces of the

instrument and how the sound changes when she presses on the keys. She played scales for us as well as several songs, including “Supercalifragilisticexpialicious.”

    On Wednesday morning the children worked in their handwriting workbook for the first time, writing the capital letter F. Your child should be able to “describe” how to write a capital F as “big line down, frog jump, little line, little line. All of the early letters we will learn are considered “frog jump”
letters, as the procedure is to make a line down and then “frog jump” back to the starting point for the next line.

    This week we again visited with Mr. Glassman in the Art Room. We continued working on our Fall Trees. This time we added multi-colored paint leaves which we “applied” with our fingers. We hope to complete the entire project next week.

    The Torah portion for this week is Parshat Noach where we learned that although Noach
collected pairs of every animal, he took seven pairs of each kosher animal. We also discussed why Hashem made the keshet appear after the flood. Our parsha project is a group bulletin board of Noach’s Teva with pairs of animals and a very colorful Keshet. Our Shabbat cooking project for this week was no surprise to the class, as we had to begin preparations on Thursday for our
excellent “Keshet Cake” in honor of this parsha.

For your information:
    1. The children are now learning the second paragraph of Birkat HaMazon. As this is probably the hardest section to learn correctly by memory only, we strongly encourage you to bentch aloud with your child, helping him/her with the pronunciation of the words.
    2. Reminder: There is no school next Friday, Oct. 30 as this is a teacher in-service day.

                    Shabbat Shalom,
                    Morah Linda Kagan and Morah Zenia Cohen

Week of October 12-16, 2009

Dear Parents,

This week in Kindergarten it was a pleasure welcoming back all our students from Sukkot vacation. We loved hearing all about how the children used what they had learned in school to enhance their Sukkot holiday!

We began our study of the weekly parsha as we learned about Parshat Bereshit. The children listened to the first few lines of Bereshit in Hebrew, in order to make them aware that the parsha name is always near the beginning of each individual parsha. We explained to the class that this year they will learn “Kindergarten Torah” and each year the parshiot will be reviewed and expanded upon. For this reason, your child should be able to tell you what was created on each of the first six days, that the seventh day was set aside as a day of rest, Shabbat, and they should also be able to tell some of the story of Adom and Chava. The children were very excited about learning their first parsha and we hope you will set aside time each week at the Shabbat table to discuss the parsha together. Besides completing a project showing all the days of creation, we also learned a song to go with this week’s Parsha. In addition we are very excited that Rabbi Mordechai Ginsparg will begin weekly Friday visits to talk to the entire Kindergarten about Parshiot, Middot and Holidays.

This week we began our study of the Alphabet and the children are learning a chant about the letters and their sounds. The order of the letters studied this year will be based on our handwriting program, Handwriting Without Tears. We began learning about the letter “F” as in “firefighter.” We were amazed at how many words the children were able to think of that began with the letter “F”. We made special folders in which to put our “F” projects and the first page was finding all the “F’s” in a silly sentence. For our special Friday snack we are going to be eating French Fries! We will continue working on the letter “F” next week.

We had our first Art class with Mr. Glassman on Tuesday, where we began working on fall tree pictures. We look forward to the next step in this process next week.

SPECIAL REMINDER:

On Monday, October 19^th for our trip to Wagner Farm please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately for the weather, as most of our time will be spent outdoors. We request that children bring either a dairy or pareve lunch on this day.Thank you for your help.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Zenia Cohen and Morah Linda Kagan

Week of September 29 – October 1, 2009

This week in Kindergarten was spent learning more about Sukkot and talking about Simchat Torah. We discussed how a Sukkah has to be a temporary dwelling and how the roof cannot be solid, but open enough to see the stars. We learned the bracha to say when we sit in the Sukkah as well as the one we say on the Lulov and Etrog. We hope you enjoy the projects your child has brought home, including those that were laminated in order to use in your Sukkah.

For Simchat Torah we discussed how the reading of the Torah both concludes and begins anew on this holiday. The children made tie-dye flags to use in shul for hakafot and we practiced marching in anticipation of the holiday. Rabbi Linzer came to visit on Thursday with a Sefer Torah. He talked about the various parts of a Torah, and how a Torah is made.

Looking ahead to our return after Yom Tov, we will be beginning our study of the alphabet letters and their sounds, as well as beginning to learn the weekly parsha.

For Your Information:

1. We are focusing on the first paragraph of the Birkat HaMazon until after the holidays. Please practice with your child as you celebrate with your family in the coming weeks.

2. A list of the tefillot we have been learning was sent home with the holiday projects. Please daven with your child daily to reinforce what we have learned so we will be ready to introduce new tefillot when we return.

Chag Sameach,

Morah L. Kagan

Morah Z. Cohen

Week of September 21-25, 2009

Dear Parents,

     In preparation for Yom Kippur, we learned the story of Yonah and colored in a puzzle page
of Yonah in the “big fish.” We also learned about “Kaporot” and made our own cardboard
chickens. We look forward to Rabbi Linzer joining us to perform the mitzvah of Kaporot on
Friday. We also are excited to make apple kugel for our special Friday snack. We read The
Hardest Word a book about saying we are “sorry,” and we emphasized how important it is to
say we are sorry to other people and to Hashem.

     We are immersed in learning about Sukkot and Simchat Torah. We talked about what a
Kosher Sukkah can be made of and also learned about lulavim and etrogim.   Each child made a
lulav and etrog to use over Sukkot.   During singing time, we learned songs for Sukkot and
Simchat Torah. The children enjoyed hearing about inviting different “Ushpizin” (guests)
each night into our Sukkah and learned a song to help us remember who visits each night.

    This was Amitai’s special “Getting to Know You” week when we
also celebrated his birthday. We learned that Amitai’s favorite

holiday is Purim and that he wants to be a pilot when he grows up.
We saw some special pictures of Amitai and especially liked the
one of him fishing. Thank you to Amitai’s parents for the yummy
treat! Here is a picture of Amitai and his parents at our
celebration.

     In our Handwriting Without Tears program we have learned the names of the different
kinds of lines that make up all the letters.

Shabbat Shalom and have a meaningful Yom Kippur,
Morah Zenia Cohen and Morah Linda Kagan

Special Reminders:
1. No school on Monday, Sept. 28th for Yom Kippur
2. Sukkot vacation begins next Friday, October 2nd.   We will return to school on Tuesday,
Oct. 13th.

Week of September 14, 2009

Dear Parents,
    We were very glad to meet so many of you at our Open House on Monday evening. Should you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of the Kindergarten Program please let us know.
    This week we spent our time learning, reviewing, drawing and singing about Rosh Hashanah. Each day the children listened as the shofar was blown by Rav Kakon, Amitai’s father. We learned the different sounds of the shofar and how we should remember to do tshuvah when we hear those shofar sounds. We talked about walking to Tashlich on the first day* of the holiday and eating a “new” fruit on the second night in order to recite ubhjva. We were very busy making many special Rosh Hashanah projects to add to the enjoyment of your holiday.
    On Tuesday, Mr. David Bergman visited the Kindergarten. Mr. Bergman is a beekeeper, who held the children spellbound as he talked about bees, pollen, wax, extractors, smokers and honey. Check out our website later this week to see pictures of his visit.
    This week we began to talk about Yom Kippur and discussed what constitutes a fast.
We explained to the children that the suggested length of a "Kindergarten fast" be from
dinner on Erev Yom Kippur until breakfast the next morning. We read the book Sneakers to Shul and talked about how we wear non-leather shoes on this holy day when we stand before Hashem. We learned several songs for the holiday including "Tshuvah, Tefillah and Tzeddakah," and the mobile the children are making will serve to remind them of the song, as well as to
become an additional decoration for your Sukkah.
    Monday was our first visit to the Hillel Torah Library. The children were excited to check out books, which they may read at home until the following Monday. Should you and your child finish reading the book early, feel free to send it back any time during the week.

For Your Information:
    1.    There are no classes this Friday, Sept. 18 – Erev Rosh Hashanah
    2.    Monday, Sept. 21 is Tzom Gedaliah. All children will be dismissed from the Auditorium at 1:30 P.M. just like a Friday dismissal unless you notify us of a change. There is no Aftercare on this day.
    3.    We would like to place our first Scholastic Book order by next week and your forms are due by Wednesday, Sept. 23. If you choose to place an order, please send your order form(s) and one check (payable to Scholastic Books). We cannot accept cash payments for book orders. Be sure to place your order in a sealed envelope within your child’s mailbox.
    4.    Remember to return the Highlights Magazine order forms, checking yes or no and signing your name. Thank you to all who have already returned the forms.

    Wishing you and your families a Shana Tova U’metuca. May you be blessed with good health, happiness and peace for yourselves and Klal Yisroel.

                    Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova,
                    Morah Linda Kagan and Morah Zenia Cohen.

* (This year because the first day is Shabbat, we go to Tashlich on the second day)

Week of September 8, 2009

Dear Parents,

This week in Kindergarten we started learning all about Rosh Hashonah. We learned about the different sounds of the shofar. We also began working on several projects which we know you will enjoy.

We drew portraits of ourselves after talking about body parts and facial features. Our artistic efforts are currently displayed in our room, and we will save them until the end of the year to compare and see how your child has grown.

Our class had a discussion about all the things we expect to learn how to do in Kindergarten and we completed a writing and drawing activity to go with our discussion.

One of the highlights each week is our special singing time when we get together with the other kindergarten class to sing many wonderful songs.

We were excited to have our first gym class where the children learned how to do many exercises.

In computer class we are learning how to use the program “KidPix.” It is amazing how quickly the children are becoming “computer savvy.”

We have begun working on our “Handwriting Without Tears” program, by doing several

pre-writing activities.

The children had fun hunting for different shapes in our classroom.

We had our first Hebrew class with Morah Cheryl this week.

We are so proud of how well our students are getting settled into our classroom routine, and we look forward to seeing you at our Open School Night on Monday, September 14^th at 7:20 p.m. to tell you all about our program!

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Cohen and Morah Kagan

Morah Linda Kagan and Morah Zenia Cohen

This Week in Kindergarten

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