Gan Teva Educational Philosophy

About a month in, Gan Teva at Ner Shalom finally had its first real rainy day of outdoor early childhood education. It was an exciting opportunity for Ms. Sarah to test the limits of our outdoor play, and for the kids to learn about the world in a new light. And they LOVED it! 

We started indoors, as we do every Friday, making our challah loaves (this week with a pumpkin dough to go with our Hebrew word of the week - dela'at). After that was finished, our students were not deterred from our usual morning adventure walk. They felt the rain on their palms, listened to it fall on the trees, watched the streams form and flow in our parking lot, smelled the damp earth of the rainy woods, and had so much fun jumping in puddles. One student even stuck out her tongue and tasted the raindrops as they fell! 

After that, the students came inside and took off their rainsuits. We had snack in the cozy corner of our indoor classrooms and took some time to dry off and get warm before going back outside for our sensory stations! Another hour of wet, cold fun, and back in they trudged to close off our first rainy day of preschool with our weekly Shabbat routine.