A blog by staff of the Early Childhood Center of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor.
Last week the Zebra room chose to do a color week. The children loved pointing out that they were all wearing the same colors. We also incorporated the color of the day into our small groups for the week. We colored with red crayons, played with different colors of shaving cream, different colors of dot markers, and also yellow play dough. Special thank you to the parents who made our color week a great success!
On Friday, October 26th the Zebra room ( along with other rooms) welcome a very special and talented storyteller to the zebra room, Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff. Mara Jennifer did a story telling training with the teachers earlier in the week and then came into the classroom to show her skills and talent with the children. They all enjoyed the story of Toby and Tolla the chameleons and their adventures to find food while on Noah's Ark. The kids enjoyed acting along with Mara Jennifer as she acted out scenes in the story.
Who is Gemini you might ask? They are a group comprised of twin Brothers ; Sandor and Laszlo Slomovits. Gemini visits the JCC ECC from time to time and preforms a concert for the children. The Zebra room absolutely loves Gemini!…In fact at any given time if you hear music playing in the room there is a very good chance its Gemini. Does you child walk around singing “ hello hello hello….” or “ It’s a pizza It’s a pizza”….Yep you guess it Gemini!…During the concert the children sang along, danced and watched in awe as they played different instruments. If anyone would like more information about Gemini please visit http://www.geminichildrensmusic.com/
With the unseasonably warm weather this past week the Zebra room got to spend a lot of time outside. It was nice to get a break from the coats and hats for a day or two. The kids really enjoyed jumping in the leaves, throwing and raking them. 
The Zebra room has been busy exploring apples. We have made homemade applesauce, which the children loved tasting after we cooked it! We also added apples and honey to our Challah dough. The children enjoyed being included in the process of coring the apples. Each child was able to turn the crank on the corer and spin the apple and watch the skin come off. They were equally excited that we got to feed the scraps that we didn’t use for our challah and our applesauce to the animals outside.
Along with exploring apples Pertez has also been blowing the Shofar in the hallway, our children have enjoyed this as well. Pertez was kind enough to bring his Shofar into the Zebra room and allowed our children to explore how it felt and how it sounded up close. The children have been creating their own Shofars out of items they have found in the room, they have enjoyed blowing them and hearing the different noises that they can create.
For another large group we decorated some clear contact paper with die cut apples, and Shofars. We talked about the different color apples and about the Shofar and the sounds it makes. You can see our creation on display on our window.
