Temple Beth Sholom – In the Center of the Action – Orange County's oldest Reform Jewish Temple

A few weeks ago, at morning meeting, we were looking over the calendar for the month ahead (January) and discussing events that were coming up.  “Oh and school is closed on this Monday” I said, pointing to the box marked the 16^th.  “Why?” one of the children asked.  “To celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King” I answered quickly, without truly thinking about what that meant.  “Who is that?” was asked next.  A conversation began about Dr. King, who he was and why we celebrate his birthday.  Looking around, the children seemed a little confused by the information.  “Would you like to learn more about him? Maybe read some books?” I asked, thinking about how to make Dr. King’s message of equality for all a little less abstract. “Yeah!” the children responded, looking much less confused and much more enthusiastic.

Over the next few weeks, we read books about Dr. King, Rosa Parks, watched a bit of the “I have a dream” speech and engaged in dialogue about history, equality, fairness, dreams and attempted to discover what we thought about the word—peace.

We wrapped up our study of the work of Dr. King, through a project where we traced our hands on to paper, cut them out and marveled at the different shapes and colors we found.  Next, we brought out our skin color paints and painted the paper hands with a kaleidoscopic of skin colors.  Finally, we built upon our previous dialogue and spoke about the question: What is peace? What is a dream? What is your dream of peace?

Even though we wrapped up our study of this work… our exploration of these themes:  history, equality, fairness, dreams, peace and even kindness will come up again.  It may happen through natural curiosity and discussion and also through future holidays such as Purim, Passover, and day of remembrance.

Please come check out our poster board in our class to see what we’ve created.

Here is a recent article from the LA Times that reaffirms the need for unstructured play for preschool children.  It is worth taking the time to read and please pass along to fellow parents and others in the community that have influence on the play of young children!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-play-20120109,0,7103263.story

Enjoy!

Planning clipboards from Wednesday, January 4th

Happy New Year!  Our class has been back together for two days now and has so excited to see familiar faces and get back in the swing of things. A recent addition that we have added in the New Year is the use of planning clipboards.  What does that mean?  Well, each morning, at meeting time, we previously ended our time with a discussion of the different areas of the room that we were each planning on working in.  The clipboards take this discussion to the next level.  We use the clipboards as a visual representation of our thoughts.  We first discuss and think… hmm, what would I like to do?  Then, we use the clipboards as a place to draw, write, and sketch a plan of something we would like to work on in the classroom either today or sometime in the future.  Although this is a new concept to the children, they seem to be getting the hang of it and enjoying the creative process of the designing a visual representation of their thoughts and ideas.  As this process continues we will see their plans get more and more complex over time as they choose to represent them in different ways  as their ideas become more focused and detailed.  This will be an exciting process to watch unfold!

Our Blog for Room 4 is coming soon! Keep an eye on your email for information about our blog launch!