Volume 27 Issue 19 29 Jun 2018 16 Tammuz 5778

Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director Kornmehl

This term at Kornmehl all 3 groups have been exploring a number of projects.

In this week’s newsletter, we thought to share some of the learning happenings in the Pre-school.

JNF Blue Box competition

The Dolphins and Starfish children have spent time over the past few weeks thinking and reflecting about the Blue Boxes from JNF that we put tzedakah in every Friday at Shabbat. The children take this responsibility very seriously and love popping their coins into the tzedakah box. We used this prior knowledge as a provocation to inspire the children to create a new design for the JNF Blue Box for a competition the organisation is holding. The children were able to think creatively and deeply about their entries and transfer their ideas onto paper. Their comments and thoughts show how capable and competent our young citizens of the Pre-school are. We think their ideas are extremely powerful and thought provoking.

We hope you enjoy reading them:

“We shake the Blue Box and put tzedakah in to send to Israel to get water and make the land better. I drew a tree because JNF plants trees in Israel. They dig with their spades and do some gardening in Israel. The trees are still growing and the Island (Israel) is looking so much better because of the money we send them.

“The colours on my picture tell you that I really love what you do to help Israel” Zella Benko – 5 years old

“I drew a Magen David inside a big tzedakah box and it has all the coins going around to put in the tzedakah box. It has a star on the top left corner to say well done!” Dalia Lopis – 5 years old

“I was thinking to draw a tree. They take the money from the box to build the tree. I made a high tree with leaves and lots of birds.” Sophie Lawson – 4 years old

“I wanted to try and make a tree like it normally looks like for the JNF, because the birds need a home to lay in. I made a big tree trunk.” Hannah Green – 4 years old

STEM

What is STEM? It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

But what does all that mean? And how can we fit 20 animal counters onto 4 cups and 4 paddle pop sticks?

This provocation was shared with the Dolphin children, who worked in small groups to think, plan, discuss and solve this problem.

Science is about:

Aviv: Science is when you get oil and blue and red stuff and it grows or explodes.

Jemima: Science is something you do at school.

Leo P: Technology is about crystals.

Eli: About IPads

Luca: Electricity

Engineering is about:

Aviv: Drilling

Amelie: Making stuff

Savannah: Making cars

Mathematics is about:

Dalia: Counting numbers

Josh: Mathematics is numbers

Jemima: I know how to make a bridge.

Aviv: We put the cups out, then the sticks and fitted the animals on top.

Our stick insect

We have adopted a stick insect and the children have been lucky enough to observe its growth very closely over the past term. We have witnessed the stick insect shedding its skin and how quickly it has grown bigger each time it sheds its skin.

We took a closer look at the stick insect and the children were involved in a discussion about what they could see….

How many legs has it got? 

What do we know about our stick insect?

What are we thinking or wondering about it?

Sam: It is an insect. It has feelers.

Jacob: It takes its skin off. It kind of dances when it moves.

Vitaly: He is alive.

Isabella: Little lines, 2 lines point out of it. It has skinny legs. He has spikes to scare the other animals away, so no one will eat him. I think he’s trying to grip onto a leaf.

We had questions…

How does it climb?

How does it grip on?

Jacob: Maybe she has claws.

Leo: She’s may be doing yoga.

We explored one way of representing the stick insect using blu tak and different sized wooden sticks.

The questioning and learning continued.

Nadav: How many legs do we need?

Jacob: How can I make a curly tail?

Jonathan K: How many legs does it have?

The children’s clever creations using loose parts helped them to internalise the different body parts of the insect and resulted in them further developing their knowledge and understanding of how many legs to add on, how many body parts it had and how it moved. Their visual representations showed their deep understanding.

We are conscious of how children at this age can learn through many different languages and mediums. By allowing the children to use all their senses to explore concepts, we are assisting them to make their thinking visible.

Olive oil pressing

What is olive oil? 

Where does olive oil come from?

How can we get the oil out of the olives?

In January when some of the teachers from Kornmehl went on the JNF Educators Study Tour to Israel, we were privileged to spend time at Katzrin Talmudic Village and take part in the process of ancient olive oil pressing. The process was fascinating, and we were inspired by this experience to further explore what we could do with the olives in our garden.

In Term 1, the children participated in climbing up onto a ladder to pick the olives from our olive tree in the Kornmehl garden. The children were involved in the process of pickling the olives over a number of weeks and finally getting to taste them and enjoy their flavours. In Term 2, we received a huge bucket full of olives from a past parent’s olive farm. We decided to explore the concept of crushing the olives to make olive oil.

Our first step was to crush the olives – both the fruit and the seeds with rocks.

Jonathan K: We need heavy rocks to crush the olives and the seed inside.

Griffin: This is a messy job. We could do an experiment.

Jacob: I crushed the seeds, look.

Nadav: Now we can’t eat the olives.

This process enabled the children to learn about a number of concepts:

  • Exploring the process and uses for olives
  • Discovering and hypothesising what might happen and how can we make it happen
  • Discovering and learning about a process
  • Exploring scientific concepts such as heavy and light, floating and sinking.

The Seashells have begun exploring different pets. This interest has been initiated by the children, who have been chatting about their pets and incorporating play about pets into their imaginative games.

The Educators decided to use this as a provocation for learning and discovery.

They converted their home corner into a veterinary surgery. A mum, who is a Vet came in to talk to the children about the work she does.

The children have been sharing pictures of their pets at home and also bringing them in to show the group.

The children have taken this learning into their creative art works and this has inspired many beautiful representations. 

Happy birthday

We wish a very happy birthday to Ellie Becker (5) and Dalia Lopis (5). We hope you had a special day.