Wow!! What a wonderful week to be at the Friedberg JCC Early
Childhood Centers. Yesterday, April 26th we celebrated Yom
Ha’atzmaut- Israeli Independence Day, and boy do we know how to throw a party!
In Oceanside all of our children donned special Israeli flag
hats and signs as we marched around the whole building! We waved our Israeli
flags high in the air so that all of the JCC members would know we were
celebrating this very special birthday.
At the end of our special parade, we all gathered for a
wonderful sing-a-long with Miss Diane and Miss Brooke. This was made extra
special when Rabbi Greenspan from Oceanside Jewish Center joined us and taught
us how to sing “Happy Birthday to Israel” in Hebrew!! We were all so proud of
ourselves for learning to celebrate Israel in its national language.
We finished off this spectacular day by heading back to our
classrooms for snack. But this wasn’t just any snack… we had blue and white
birthday cupcakes that we baked ourselves for this very special occasion!
Everyone had smiles (and frosting) all over their faces!!
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| Yummy Cupcakes in Oceanside! |
Meanwhile over in Long Beach…
We kicked off our celebration with an outdoor parade around
the block wearing hats that we made so the whole neighborhood could rejoice
with us!! Earlier in the week, every classroom made their own flags to wave,
which we all did in different ways. Our
Two’s used their flags to review the colors blue and white, while the Three’s
broke down the different shapes on the flag and talked about rectangles and
triangles. Finally, our Pre-K kids learned how to illustrate their own
flags. Drawing one triangle
right-side-up and another one up-side-down can be quite difficult, and we were
touched to see our children who grasped the concept the easiest helping their
friends until they were all successful!
After our parade we came back to our classrooms and talked
about why Israel is important to us. Some of our favorite responses included:
Two-year-olds: “Because it’s Israel’s birthday!”
Three-year-olds: “My Safta lives there!” and “They have lots
of dreidels there!”
Pre-K: “It’s a really old country; it’s bigger than a city;
it’s 64 years old” and “Because it’s close and very far away at the same time!”
Our Long Beach children also had the pleasure of working
with Miss Yochi to learn the Israeli national anthem- Hatikvah. We’re so proud
of them!! Check out this wonderful video of our Pre-K kids singing:
As you can see, it was a spectacular week full of
celebration!
Next week is really important to us too; it’s national
Screen Free Week. We have been talking all month long about the importance of
outdoor play and recently celebrated Earth Day, so it makes perfect sense that
it all culminates in this celebration. You will hear all about Screen Free Week
from us next Friday, but in the meantime check out http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/screenfreeweek/
to prepare yourself and your family for the week ahead.
Check out our Facebook for more great pictures from this
week’s celebrations!
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