A Creepy-Crawly Week

This week in the Bears’ classroom, the children had the opportunity to learn a bit about insects. We read the books The Very Hungry Caterpillar and From Caterpillar to Butterfly. The children each made a 3-D caterpillar, and followed it up the next day by decorating a very beautiful butterfly. Before long, we will (hopefully) be able to search for real butterflies while playing outside! Next, the children paired up colorful spider webs which they “spun” themselves, with creepy spiders, which each child cut out on their own. It was wonderful to see how much their cutting skills have grown since the beginning of the school year. The children also counted how many legs they glued onto their spiders. We read the book and sang the song The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Throughout the year we have woven the Sammy Spider book series into our curriculum as we celebrate the Jewish holidays, and the children are always happy to share that spiders don’t celebrate holidays, “spiders spin webs!”

We read the book How & Why Insects Visit Flowers and the children heard how various different insects work to help flowers grow. Zev was proud to tell us how they stick their tongues in the flower to suck out the nectar. On Friday, we read the book 10 Little Ladybugs and each child crated their own ladybug.

Despite the gloomy weather, we were still able to go outside almost every day. The children enjoy the fresh air. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the “real” Spring! The children have become experts on helping to place the cover back onto the sandbox during our playground cleanup time. This takes group cooperation and each child is always proud to help.

Next week, we will be celebrating the holiday of Lag B’Omer, which is a holiday to commemorate the victorious Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. In Israeli tradition, it is a day of parties, picnics and bonfires.

If you have not yet done so, please sign up for an end of the year conference. These conferences will take place on Wednesday, May 25^th and Tuesday, May 31^st.

Have a wonderful weekend. Shabbat Shalom.

Morah Rhona and Morah Jessica