Rosh Hashanah and Insects in their Homes

Happy Friday! Today was such a busy and fantastic Friday for Flowers. Our day started with getting ready for the Grandparents’ Day on Monday. We helped our teacher in painting our friends’ hand prints, cutting hearts, and making paper chains. We also made a special gift for our grandparents joining us on Monday. We hope they will like it! We got very excited when we learned that there are many grandparents who are coming to Flowers and joining online. “Are my grandpa and grandpa coming, too?”, we asked. Some of our friends whose grandparents won’t be able to make it on Monday asked, “How about my grandparents?”. Then Vieda said, “the grandparents who are coming on Monday will be everyone’s grandparents”. We all cheered and said, “Yay! We have many grandparents in Flowers!”. We have plans to make sure that our grandparents will have lots of fun when they attend our Grandparents’ Day. 

PARK TIME

          Before we headed to the park, we sang The Beehive Song and learned the rest of the words for The Ants Go Marching In song. It was great to sing and learn new words and rhymes at the same time. We love the actions that go with the songs, too!

          Today’s park time was a little different from our usual park times. We went to pond across the temple and checked if we could find some insects. What should we do if we see insects at the park?

          Th: You need to leave them alone!

          Mi: We need to be gentle.

          B You can hold them in your hand.

We wondered what we would find in the pond.

          C: We saw a spider last time.

          A: I saw in the water, there was trash. I saw a bee showing on it.

          E: We can see water striders in the water.

          Ke: In Japanese, that’s amenbo. We can say amenbo when we speak Japanese.

At the park, we enjoyed seeing a lot of rolly pollies under the rock. We looked at the soil and were expecting to see ladybugs, but there weren’t any.  We were happy to see ants and butterflies. There were some movements in the pond and saw a turtle but not insects. It was great to see real insects in their homes. Next time, it will be great to visit other places to see other insects.

SPECIAL GUEST

          We heard that we had a special guest today. Th shared that it meant, “people we haven’t seen for a long time”. Hi added, “they are special people because they’re coming”. Who could it be? We tried to guess and most of us thought it would be either R’s mom, Hi i’s mom, or Ty’s mom. The long wait was over. We made a space in the circle for our special guest, then closed our eyes and counted to 10. When we opened our eyes, the special guest was sitting in the spot reserved for her. It was Shelley!

 ROSH HASHANAH (Jewish New Year)

          We learned that in Hebrew, “rosh” means head or the beginning. Shelley told us a story about a girl who was asked to find a house that didn’t have any windows and had a star in the middle. What could it be? She asked several animals until she discovered that was something from a tree. It was a red apple!

          Shelley: What is inside the apple?

          Ke: Seed!

We had an interesting chat about some of the things that we do on the Jewish New Year. Sh said, “we eat apples and honey”. We took a small piece of apple and dipped it in honey! It was delicious! Some of us didn’t try to eat it but enjoyed the good smell of it. We also tried blowing a special trumpet that was made of the ram’s horns. Sh was the first one who blew it and the sound was great! Axel wiped it each time a friend took a turn so we could try blowing it. We were surprised at how difficult it was, even for Cameron and Axel. Sh said that “it’s telling something that there’s a really strong one coming”.

STORY TIME ( The Little, Little House by Jessica Souhami)

          The title of this book sparked our interest and made us to imagine how it would be like to live in a little house.

          Au: I don’t like it because everything won’t fit.

          Co: You won’t have a playing area in a small house so the kids would be sad.

          Sh: My family cannot fit!

This story talked about a family of five who lived in a house and thought that they wouldn’t be happy because of the size of their house. The dad, Joseph went to Aunty Bella who was known to give good advice. Each advice did not seem to work out for the family!

          Au: It’s making them even more angrier and madder!

          Ar: It’s worser!

          Cl: Angry!
          Ke: Catch the police and go into police station. The noisy one.

          Au: Aunty Bella has worse ideas! They should get out of the house and get a bigger house.

This story made us feel that sometimes there are things around us that fail to notice until something happens. It always feels good to appreciate the little things because they do make us happy! We love this book and would read it again in the library!

          Have a wonderful weekend!

          See you on Monday!

Love,

Flowers