The Little Shofar Chanukah 2010/5771 Jewish Family Congregation Early Childhood Center Newsletter Dear Parents, These last weeks have been filled with activity and excitement. The children began by studying Thanksgiving and, immediately following their Thanksgiving feast, they immersed themselves in learning about the miracle of Chanukah. Going from thankfulness to miracles is nothing unusual for the ECC as we do it everyday. Being with your children and helping them develop their skills is truly a blessing that we are grateful for. Yet it is also the miracles we see every day that makes our work worthwhile. We may not see the mighty army of Antiochus defeated by the Jewish Maccabee soldiers as the story of Chanukah retells. We do, however, see the smile of victory as a coat is zipped for the very first time. Of course, we remembered with gratitude that the oil lasted for eight days instead of one as we lit our Chanukiot. Nevertheless, when a child can finally write her name the light in her eyes shines even brighter. Thank you for letting us share in these special milestone moments with your children and thank you for coming to our Chanukah celebration last Wednesday. Seeing our families together was another wonderful blessing we can all be thankful for, and hearing the children sing the songs they learned for Chanukah was a miracle we all enjoyed.
Although our children were very busy learning and practicing a variety of developmental skills, the ECC committee was just as busy. Thank you to Luda Samuels, Elise Serby, Whitney Wasserman, Gillian Margolin, Rachel Clott and all of you who helped out, shopped and made the Ladies Bazaar a magnificent success. You raised over $2,000 to benefit the Early Childhood Center, and we are very grateful for all you have accomplished. The ECC committee is also planning many other social activities, so please stay tuned. In addition to the work that the ECC committee is doing to raise money for the school, they are also involved in projects to help our children learn the importance of giving tzedakah and doing
ECC Little Shofar
Chanukah 2010 / 5771 mitzvot. Sara Manes and Gillian Margolin visited the Blue and Yellow Rooms to discuss giving tzedakah with the children and to tell them where their money will be going. You probably have noticed the big Tzedakah thermometer chart showing our progress. Please help your children give generously so we can see the red line rise to our goal. Tara Kauftheil has been instrumental in helping the children do the mitzvah of “Bichur Cholim,� or visiting the sick. She provided us with a connection to the Achieve Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. Each child from the Blue and Yellow Rooms has been paired with one resident from this facility. For Thanksgiving, each child created a card for his/her own special friend with holiday greetings. You can be assured that these often-lonely residents will treasure the personal mail they receive. We are always proud of the kind things your children do. Please let them know how proud you are of them too! Our school break will be starting shortly, and I want to wish you and your family a fun-filled time together to enjoy your blessings. Most importantly, I wish you time to appreciate the important small miracles that happen every day. Have a great winter vacation.
Jewish Family Congregation Early Childhood Center Where Family is our middle name
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Chanukah 2010 / 5771 FROM THE RABBI’S DESK So. Chanukah is over, and it is still just the beginning of December. This year, the idiosyncrasies of the Jewish calendar have not served us well (ours is a lunar calendar with a solar correction, which keeps our festivals in the same seasons, year after year, but with changing dates on the secular calendar). For young children who are bombarded by advertising for the other December holiday, the next few weeks may become very oppressive; for them, the gift-giving is over, while the sales hoopla is just intensifying all around them. What is a Jewish parent to do? Here are some suggestions: Make sure that you have some Jewish CDs in your car, to avoid the seasonal music on the radio, and the advertising that goes with it; if you are like everyone else around here, you have lots of time in the car, and could use something other than the radio right now. Avoid the malls as much as you can. (duh!) Plan winter activities for your family. Ice skating, tobogganing… (ok…these all require some snow, etc…and as I write, we still do not have any!), an afternoon of board games and hot chocolate, watching great (age-appropriate) movies with popcorn and moviecandy, preparing a meal together, a trip to a kid-friendly museum, taking turns reading favourite books aloud, a visit with family and/or friends. And of course you will have many other ideas, which I encourage you to share with other parents (and maybe me as well). The Supreme Court of this country has decided that in fact Christmas is not a religious holiday, and to a large extent, that is true. Religious Christians take as much offense from the marketing of Christmas as do Jews. But even so, most Jews find it very difficult to feel included in the “spirit of the season” when it is so clearly built around a time with (what should be of) great significance for another faith. In those years when our little kids are still looking forward to Chanukah as December advances, it is tempting to make more of this holiday than it deserves. But with Chanukah behind us already, we need to make the most of the things that make the season a holiday…time off school and work, many programs and shows to enjoy, and maybe even the chance to travel, to visit family or to discover new places. I guess the bottom line is to plan the coming break to make the most of it. Please let me know how you do with that! Happy Holiday!
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Chanukah 2010 / 5771 News from the Green Room November was a busy month in the Green Room. The children were busy engaging in lots of fall and Thanksgiving related activities. First, our classroom tree was covered in apples. As the month progressed, leaves appeared and acorns were decorating the ground. Before we knew it, the grey squirrels (with bushy tails) were cracking open the acorns. For Thanksgiving, we opened up our real ORANGE and bumpy pumpkin and scooped out the seeds. Some of us used spoons while the more adventurous used their hands. The kids collected pinecones on one of our nature walks, painted with them and then used them for our magnificent Thanksgiving centerpieces. We apologize for the glitter remains, but the children just love glitter. We enjoyed practicing two new turkey songs and sang them at our Thanksgiving feast, along with eating delicious apple crisp that the little chefs helped prepare. A great time was had by all. For Chanukah, we taught the children about the miracle of Chanukah, how to spin the dreidel, and how to make yummy latkes. We loved sharing our new songs with you at our Chanukah party and hope you enjoyed making our edible dreidels. We apologize again for the glittery menorahs, but your children just LOVE glitter. We hope they enjoyed “lighting� one more candle each night to celebrate the holiday. Once again, thank you for trusting us with your little treasures. B’ Shalom, Dinah and Jodi
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Chanukah 2010 / 5771 News from the Very Busy Blue Room The fall season has seen the Blue Room humming with much activity. One beautiful day on the playground, several of our children found a big juicy worm. We were all fascinated by him and decided to make him part of our class. He was named “Wormy the Worm,” and we spent a delightful week learning all about worms, making and naming our art worms, and even having a delicious snack of worms and dirt!!! Our favorite book was Squirmy’s Big Secret. Shhh…ask your children what Squirmy was hiding. Since our favorite worm book came from the library, our next area of study was the library! The children love the library and love books. We made bookmarks, book jackets, and of course library cards. The Blue Room brought their favorite books to school. No surprise that we received several copies of the ever popular Pinkalicious. It is the season for sniffles and sneezes, so of course we all went to “medical school” and spent a fun week learning about and playing the doctor. We made several fun art projects including stethoscopes, doctor bags, and a boo-boo collage. After we cured ourselves, it was time to attend to our pets. So,…we brought in our favorite stuffed animals, and became veterinarians! Before we knew it, the Thanksgiving holiday was upon us. We all joined together to make a friendship quilt and talk about this wonderful holiday of friendship and giving. We also made beautiful centerpieces to enhance your holiday tables. The above activities, though at first may appear to have no basis of commonality, actually have common threads running through them. The Jewish Value themes of Chesed (kindness) and Tzedakah (justice, doing the right thing) were brought into all areas of study. We learned to respect nature and did the right thing by returning Wormy back to his family in the playground. Our library theme incorporated a discussion of how to treat books and of a library being a place of sharing. Our doctor/veterinarian unit stressed good health and proper eating, as well as taking care of yourself and family. As veterinarians, we discussed kindness to animals and how to treat your pets so they remain happy and healthy. Thanksgiving was infused with themes of friendship and giving, as well as discussing those who do not have as much as we do. As the year progresses, we will continue to incorporate these values as well as many others into all that we do. Shalom, Ellen and Lori Page 6
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Chanukah 2010 / 5771 News from The Yellow Room The Yellow Room had been very busy when we learned all about trains. There were train tracks all over our room during free play, while the children were being very imaginative in their building of the tracks, stations and towns. The children then extended their learning as they wrote the word train, cut out trains and displayed them on our wall. Pumpkins were also a big topic for us in November. We learned all about pumpkins and how they grow from seeds. Then we painted a big pumpkin patch, and thanks to Ethan Lipper and Nava Langer, we added more pumpkins to it every day! Handmade turkeys were soon added to make our patch even livelier that were traced, cut and decorated. As part of our study of squash, we felt the different textures of gourds and looked through a magnifying glass at the different varieties. We also compared the seeds of pumpkins and apples. The children then made estimations on how many seeds were in our pumpkin. There were 150! We also made delicious pumpkin muffins from our class pumpkin. Two batches were needed so we could eat some right away for snack and still have some later for our Thanksgiving feast. Our final culinary accomplishment was cooking cranberry sauce for our feast. It was a lot of fun sitting together with our friends from the Blue Room to celebrate Thanksgiving. The children have been writing a lot, and they are really improving. We also spend time in circle counting and working on letter recognition. At snack time, the children have to count out how many crackers they can take. At snack time, we also play hangman, which the children all love. We write all the vowels on the board and the children know they need at least one of those letters to make a word. Everyone loves to play. We just received some new books on cd, and the children enjoy turning pages with a friend while listening to a story. We hope everyone had a wonderful Chanukah! The children were very excited to make their menorahs for you, and we trust you all had a chance to use them. We really enjoyed seeing everyone on Wednesday at the Chanukah Party and hope you had as much fun as we did. Have a Happy New Year. Love, Laura and Debra Page 8
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First-Year Dues For Young Families Lowered by 50% Thinking of joining JFC? If your oldest child is in Kindergarten in 2011/12 or younger, first-year JFC dues are now only half the annual dues amount! And, if your children are (or will be) enrolled in the Jewish Family Congregation Early Childhood Center, your JFC membership entitles you to a
JFC Congregant Discount on tuition!
For more information or to join JFC, call (914) 763-3028 Or visit us on-line at: www.jewishfamilycongregation.org You’ll feel at home when you’re part of our family… Jewish Family Congregation
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JFC Early Childhood Center PARENTING CENTER 2010 - 2011
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