October 5, 2012

Dear Gefen Families,

In math this week we had an introduction to regrouping with subtraction. We used 10's rods and 1's cubes to help us "see" the whole process. We will continue to work on this through next week and then we will have a review of addition and subtraction with regrouping before we move on to our next unit on fractions.

We were very fortunate to have Rav Shira Shazeer come in to teach us about the lulav and etrog. Ask your children what the different parts of the lulav are and what they symbolize. What is the pitom? What is the blessing that we say when we shake the lulav and etrog and in which directions do we shake? Which way do we hold the etrog? And, what happens if we accidentally break off the pitom?

We continue to learn the parts of speech. This week was a review of nouns and we also learned about verbs. This will be tied into our writing as I will be asking the children to recognize the nouns and verbs in their sentences. 

Our study of America continued this week as we finished learning about the American Flag. Ask your child what the 50 stars stand for. Why are there 13 stripes? And, why were the colors red, white and blue used? We ended our study of the flag with a discussion about different colors used on flags and their meanings. Then, we asked the children to create their own flags which represent who they are. They could show their families, interests, favorites, etc. And, finally, we discussed that there is an election coming and asked who knew anything about the debates. As a connection, we shared a cute story called The First Pooch, the Obamas Pick a Pet by Carole Boston. Next week we will focus on some American symbols.

To end our week, today we met with the kindergarten and first grade to begin our study of the year long theme of appreciating differences. We discussed what it means to be created in G-d's image (not how we look but how we act) and we realized that we all have unique talents and abilities which we can use to behave in G-d's image.

Reminders:

No school next Monday and Tuesday, October 8th and 9th.

Shabbat Shalom,

HaMorah Caren