Great Resource for Jewish Montessori Activities

A Jewish Homeschool Blog deserves mention again for a great resource created for Sefer Bereishit.

Click here to find a link to download Montessori Activities for Chumash Bereishit. All of these activities are wonderful and engaging.

Parashat Toldot and the 5 senses

In  Parshat Toldot twins boys are born to Rivkah and Yitzchak. My husband is a twin, so we just pulled out some photo albums and we were good to go with that concept.

This week's parasha also tells the story of Yitzchak blessing his sons before his death.

  Yitzchak is growing old and blind and tells his son Eisav to hunt some food for him and when he returns he will bless him. Rivkah overhears and tells Yaakov to impersonate as Eisav in order to receive his brother's blessings. She dresses him in Eisav's clothes, covers his skin with goatskin, and prepares food to give to Yitzchak. Since Yitchak's vision was poor, he had to use all of his other senses to determine who was the man standing before him. 

We spent some time role playing how Yitzchak used his senses and then expanded our lesson to other activities that teach about our five senses. 

See chart below:

Senses	Yitchak’s use of senses to discern who stood in front of him to receive his blessing	Parasha reenactment	5 senses expanded lesson
Sight	Poor Vision	Blindfold child to have them use their other senses to figure out who or what is in front of them.	Place a few object for child to see, tell child to close their eyes while you remove one of the objects. Have them guess what went missing. Great visual memory task!
Hearing	Listening to speaker’s voice	While blindfolded listen to other’s speak and guess who is talking to you	Have child turn their back to you while you play a variety of real/toy instruments. Child guesses the instrument.
Taste	Tasting the food brought to him	While blindfolded try to guess what you are eating.	While blindfolded child tastes a variety of foods and describes them as sweet, salty, sour, etc
Touch	Feeling the skin of person in front of him	While blindfolded, have child say feel the skin of your arm vs. an arm covered with a wooly sweater	Place different shaped items in socks and have child feel outline of object with their fingers to describe the shape they feel. We drew the shapes as well before opening the sock.
Smell	Smelling the person while giving him a kiss	While blindfolded, have you child give a kiss to you or siblings and guess who they smell. We did this one with my mother and it was a lot of fun for all!	Put different scented materials into containers with holes on top. Children can guess the smell or have two of the same scent for children to match.

Thanksgiving Preschool Crafts: Giving Thanks

Since Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away and we are continuously trying to plant the seeds of gratefulness in our girls we spent the day creating Thanksgiving crafts and focusing on what we are grateful for. 

We started with this really sweet Thanksgiving hand print tree 

 Trace and cut outline of child's forearm and hand from paper bag. 

Before assembling tree, moisten the hand print tree and crinkle it up. After it dries, it will have a weathered look to resemble a tree trunk.

I used silk leaves on which we wrote what the girls are thankful for and glued it all on card stock. 

Paper plate turkey with construction paper feathers to write what we are thankful for.

Sensory Turkeys:

We filled latex gloves with rice, beads, shaving cream, and water and had the girls guess what's inside. This was a great sensory activity and the girls especially loved watching the shaving cream ooze out from a tiny hole in one of the gloves.

 Ok, so not exactly a great turkey look a like. 

 Made this cute little Mayflower using a coffee sleeve, popsicle stick and paper sail. Full directions here. I asked my daughter what she was thankful for and she said letters....

Now a little craft for me. 

I love wreaths, but have never made or owned one before.When I saw a foam wreath in the Target dollar section, I knew I had to give it a try. 

I wrapped the wreath in twine, also from a dollar store. This was time consuming but I did it while watching a movie so the time went by pretty quickly. Used straight pins to secure twine to back of wreath.  

 Decorated the wreath with silk leaves and flowers. Voila! You can have your Thanksgiving guests help personalize your wreath by writing what they are grateful for on each leaf.

Rubber Band Vases

Photo Source

Saw these on line and fell in love.

So easy and cheap!

Get your hands on some glass votives, wine glasses, vases. Place rubber bands around it and spray with white or frosted glass spray paint.

I was really excited about his project. However, my lines did not come out as neat as I would have liked.

I haven't given up. I've got two cans full of spray paint and will try again. Maybe waiting longer for the vase to dry before removing bands will do the trick. Hoping others have better luck with this project! Please share your techniques below.

Also, check out some other ways to fancy up some plain old vases at Design Megillah

How gorgeous are these?

Parshat Chayei Sarah Project, Activities, and Crafts

In this week's parasha, Avraham sends Eliezer to Charan to find a suitable wife for Avraham's son Yitzchak. Eliezer is sent on his way with a caravan of camels and gifts for the future bride. While in Charan, Eliezer asks  G-d to send him a woman who would not only fetch water for him when he asks for it, but fetch water for his camels as well. Rivkah does this for Eliezer and is chosen to marry Yitzchak. Yitzchak falls in love with her and they marry.

Since the well is a significant part of the parasha, we did a little science lesson on wells.
Considering I knew nothing about natural wells, I did some research and found out that well water comes from aquifers.
"An aquifer fills with water from rain or melted snow that drains into the ground. In some areas, the water passes through the soil on top of the aquifer; in others, it enters through joints and cracks in rocks. The water moves downward until it meets less permeable rock. 

Aquifers act as reservoirs for groundwater. Water from aquifers sometimes flows out in springs. Wells drilled into aquifers provide water for drinking, agriculture, and industrial uses. Aquifers can dry up when people drain them faster than nature can refill them. Because aquifers fill with water that drains from the surface of the Earth, they can be contaminated by any chemical or toxic substance found on the surface". (National Geographic)

Photo Source

So now I have a basic understanding of it, but how will my preschooler? Well have no fear
The Incredible Edible Aquifer is here:

Photo Source

 Here is the recipe I got from this site to make my own edible aquifer:

Edible Treat                                  Corresponding Layer of Earth

Bottom of cup (not edible).........................Bedrock

Ice, Sprite, & blue dye...............................Lower Aquifer

Ice Cream..................................................Confining Layer

Ice..............................................................Upper Aquifer

Chocolate Cookie Crumbs.......................Soil

Green Sprinkles........................................Plant Life

Straws.........................................................Well Casing

Your Mouth................................................Well Pump

I explained the lower aquifer as being rocks that water can go through. My daughter was able to see this happen as I poured the soda over the ice. I told her the next layer (ice cream) was like clay and the upper aquifer was more rock that water can go through. The cookies are the  dirt, the green sprinkles are plants and your mouth is the pump pulling up the well water.

For those who are a little more handy, you may want to try making this functional well I found via Parsha Projects which was originally posted on Inna's Creations:

Photo taken with permission from Inna's Creations
Check out her site for a full set of directions

We continued our parasha study with role playing.

 We used a toy camel, a treasure chest full of jewelry and a homemade well made from popsicle sticks and a toilet paper roll.

We made some jewelry using fruit loops and a pipe cleaner (inspired by Meaningful Mama)