Transformimg Jewish Lives
Should Kindergarteners Use iPads in the Classroom?
From GovTech.com:
Much like with toy cellphones, kitchenware and hardware tools, children under a certain age once played with toy computers to simulate the experience of working on the real thing. But in recent years, children as young as 2 and 3 years old have eclipsed the step of starting out with a toy version of a piece of technology and are now playing on iPads and other devices before they start kindergarten.
And with the rising fad of mobile devices, public schools are left to decide if the use of devices like iPads should be integrated into class curriculums. While some education officials praise the newer strategy for aiding learning, others claim devices like iPads have no place in the classroom.
Read the full article in GovTech...
Tweet, Tweet, Go the Kindergartners
From The New York Times:
"Tweet, tweet, tweet!" chirped the kindergartners in Jennifer Aaron's class last week, as they settled onto the multicolored carpet and began to consider what they would like to send out into the Twitter universe that day.
Three days a week, as the school day draws to a close, the children in Ms. Aaron's class sit down to compose a message about what they have been doing all day. They then send it out to their parents and relatives through Twitter, the stamping grounds of celebrities and politicians, where few kindergartners have been known to venture.
Read the full article in The New York Times...
Pharoah, plagues, the Red Sea, lunch and a nap
From The Washington Jewish Week:
Temple Beth Ami Nursery School's children had a busy Friday.
It's one thing to read the Haggadah or hear the Haggadah being read.
It's quite another story to experience the Haggadah.
Read the full article in The Washington Jewish Week...
Preschool combines Jewish curriculum, Montessori method
From The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles:
At a table in the corner of Olam Jewish Montessori's oversized classroom, a flour-covered 4-year-old chats nonstop as he mixes dough for challah. In another part of the room, a 3-year-old boy counts colorful Chanukah candles in Hebrew as he slowly places them in a menorah. A teacher is showing a third child a map of Paris while he toys with a model Eiffel Tower in his hands.
In the background, a beaming Robyn Farber can hardly believe what she sees.
Read the full article in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles...
‘Jewish Life Can Be A Playground’
From The Jewish Week:
Some of the toddlers seated on the floor of 92nd Street Y's art gallery on a recent Friday morning barely speak in sentences but they can chant the Shema with feeling. Using sign language, they gesture wildly in all directions with their arms when they get to the name of God to show that God is all around them.
At the word "one" they all raise pinkies, and then, as directed, connect their pinkie, their "one," to someone else's. They then say it again, in silence, using only the hand gestures.
Read the full article in The Jewish Week...
Kindergarteners at the keyboard
From The Hechinger Report:
Los Angeles — First-grader Lena Barrett clicks through a series of icons and logs onto a laptop under the fluorescent lights of her classroom. Before long, a cartoon version of a game-show announcer appears.
“It’s time to show what you know by finding words,” the announcer says. “In this game, you will click on words that mean the same thing as the word the narrator says. Click on the word that means the same thing as ‘marvelous.’ ”Read the full article at The Hechinger Report...
Federation assumes leading role with PJ Library
From The Portland Jewish Review:
The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland is workingto expand and promote the PJ Library with coordinator Caron Blau Rothstein.
The PJ Library, created in 2005 by Massachusetts entrepreneur Harold Grinspoon, is an organization that sends out free, Jewish kid’s books and music to more than 70,000 Jewish families on a monthly basis.Read the full article in the Portland Jewish Review...
Push for "21st century learning" has even the youngest students going high-tech
From The Denver Post:
In Jonell Tafoya's class at Gust Elementary School in southwest Denver, Liliana Lucero takes a stylus and uses it to identify the number 3 — her age — projected on the Promethean board. She taps the number and drags it into place filling a blank in a sentence on the board. Then — with some help — she reads it to the class.
"Hi, class. I am 3. Your friend, Liliana," she reads proudly before bouncing back to her seat on the carpet.
Read the full article in The Denver Post...