During our ukulele unit, 5th graders learned several chords and progressions. Recently, we’ve taken those chords and used them to learn songs! See if you can guess what this one is!
Class Blogs
Zimriyah 2017
Here is our song list for Zimriyah 2017!
Next to each song title is which grades will be singing it. We’ll be using these recordings to practice for the performance on May 25th!
KinderSTEAM with Brown Engineering
Wh
o We Are
Sara and I are both seniors studying mechanical engineering at Brown University, and we are interested in classroom design and placemaking as it relates to social and emotional learning. I worked as an assistant teacher in a preschool for several years in my hometown of Middletown, NJ. While at school, I’ve taught a theater class for 4th and 5th graders through the Brown After-school Elementary Mentoring (BEAM) program and co-lead a Design for America team investigating design thinking education in schools. Sara previously completed a project where she and her classmates custom built furniture for a 2nd grade classroom.
Project Overview
Our project is part of our capstone design course at Brown. We originally started as a part of a larger group, the purpose of which was to develop a line of children’s furniture to encourage imaginative play. Throughout our research and ideation process, Sara and I became more interested in social and emotional learning and mindfulness in classroom spaces. We eventually formed our own subgroup to explore those ideas, while the rest of the group has continued to develop their play furniture idea.
The two directions we are most interested in pursuing are designing spaces for mindfulness/reflection and exploring ways to promote feelings-sharing and healthy communication through physical objects and furniture. We have been exploring the former with the help of the JCDS Pre-K class, who have shared insights on their own classroom Quiet House with us and helped us develop our frame prototypes.
Workshop with Pre-K
We have had a great time developing our Quiet House ideas with Laurie’s Pre-K class! During circle time, we asked the students 
to tell us about their own Quiet House, which former students helped Peter build and decorate. The students explained to us that the Quiet House was a place they went when they wanted to calm down and especially enjoyed the stuffed animal snake, books, and decorative lights. We showed the students four different prototypes we designed and built out of cardboard using our laser cutter at the Brown Design Workshop. Then, each student decorated one of the prototypes using pipe cleaners, glitter, fabric, markers, ribbon, and other materials. We were really impressed with their creativity and ideas for the spaces. They had some great suggestions for ways to make the houses feel cozier, like by adding fabric to the outside or pillows and rugs on the inside. They also used stickers to show us where they thought that lights, windows, and doors should be. One student used popsicle sticks to model a front gate that would only allow him to enter his Quiet House, stressing the importance of privacy. We really appreciated the variety of creative ideas the class had, and we had so much fun helping them build. It was also really useful for us to get a clearer idea of the students’ relationship to their own Quiet House.
Design Lab with 3rd Grade
We look forward to collaborating with the 3rd Grade class in Design Lab to prototype a classroom Recharging Station. We visited Design Lab where the students were sharing the data they collected from interviewing other students. Questions the 3rd graders asked included “Should we have a recharging station in Design Lab?” and “How does the recharging station help?” For one question, 27 students said “Yes” and 25 said “No.” Rotem had students create two block towers–one with 27 blocks and one with 25 blocks. When the two towers were held up next to each other, we could see that this wasn’t a very big difference. The students are continuing their design process over the next few weeks. We can’t wait to see what they come up with!
First Grade Shadow Puppet Show
Karen and I noticed early on that every time we used the projector our students were fascinated by making shadow puppets (who isn’t?). We decided to use this to our advantage and do something never done before in first grade and create an actual shadow puppet show.
Our show, “Under the Acacia tree” – “תחת עץ השיטה” is the culmination of our cross-curricular unit on the Jewish value of שומרי אדמה, Shomrei Adama – Guardians of the Earth. It is also our first-grade research project. The show’s backdrop is an Acacia tree surrounded by the hills of the Negev desert. Students worked together to create this pastel masterpiece. We borrowed two overhead projectors and hung them from the ceiling for backlighting. The results were breathtakingly beautiful.
This English/Hebrew puppet show is based on our research on endangered animals of the Negev desert. Together we learned about the plights of endangered animals, plus what we can do to make a difference. Each student researched one animal and created a poster about it. They worked very hard to research, take notes, and draw detailed illustrations of their animals.
After the performance, our students presented their research posters. We are so proud of their accomplishments!
How can we calm our brains?
Participating in fourth grade, or any grade for that matter, can be pretty exciting here at JCDSRI. We take great pride in creating activities involving play, creativity, and real world problems and solutions. But what do you when it is time to calm your brain? How do you even calm your brain? Fourth grade has found an answer! We have decided to incorporate mindfulness meditation into our weekly activities. Once or twice a week, we take ten minutes to listen to a guided meditation in our own comfortable meditation spots. Some of us sit on chairs, some of us lay on rugs, and some of us use a pencil to doodle silently while we listen. At the end of ten minutes we shake our limbs, take a deep breath, and transition back into our academic work.
Taking these few precious minutes away from traditional learning allows little brains grow. Students are allowed the time to process the day’s activities while building mental flexibility and changing their classroom perspectives. We can’t wait to share how much we have mentally grown in the next few weeks!
Kindergarten Keys!
This week in Kindergarten we started learning all about pianos and keyboards. Here’s a video of us testing out how the piano works while watching what happens on the inside!
It’s definitely not Mozart, but it’s a start!
Celebrating Fairy Tales with our Buddies
During the month of January, Kindergarten took some time to learn all about the exciting world of fairy tales. Throughout the month, we read numerous fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs and many more. We enjoyed noticing the characters, setting and plot of each story and even incorporating STEAM activities into our learning. The students had a wonderful time building houses for the three little pigs out of different materials and seeing if the “wolf” could blow them down.
We also got together with our amazing 4th grade buddies to complete some silly fairy tale Mad Libs and, most importantly, make some awesome puppets! The buddies worked together to make their own fairy tale puppets for our class theater and, hopefully, they can perform shows for us soon. Stay tuned to see what exciting activities our buddies work on next!
Our JCC Buddies
Second grade students were ecstatic to meet their preschool buddies from the Jewish Community Center. We walked down the street and around the corner and were greeted by a wonderful group of educators and adorable students. We played games and our young second grade authors got to read their How-To books to their new friends. They laughed, they began to bond, and most of all made memories. We cannot wait for our next get together.
Learning a third language……
Students in the second grade are travelling around the world and learning about the 7 continents and oceans. While in Asia and visiting China, students learned Mandarin and expressed themselves by painting Chinese characters using calligraphy. Each character represented how a student viewed themselves. For example; courageous, caring, thoughtful, charismatic, etc.
Ukulele Practice!
Here are some of our 4th graders practicing their ukulele chords! Here we’re switching between C Major and F Major and sounding great!
More to come soon!