Our Full Tzedakah Box/ What Do We Do?

At circle time our Tzedakah Box/ Charity Box (or Pushka:) was so heavy and difficult to pass around.  When we tried shaking it to listen to the jingling sound, it wouldn't make a sound.
We realized that our Tzedakah Box was full!!
What will we do with all the coins and dollar bills we collected and how will it help poor people.
We always sing the following song when we collect Tzedakah/ Charity:
Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah that is what we give
To poor people to help them live
So they'll have food and clothes
So they'll have food and clothes
Even a penny a day
Before we start our day.

But how does collecting Tzedakah really help the poor?

First, we counted all the coins we collected.
We sorted pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Skills:

Standard 4.1:       Children begin to demonstrate an understanding of number and counting.

Standard 4.2:       Children demonstrate an initial understanding of numerical operations.

Standard 0.2: Children demonstrate self-direction.

Standard 0.4: Children exhibit positive interactions with other children and adults.

Standard 2.4: Children develop competence and confidence in activities that require gross and fine motor skills.              

    

 

Independently, the children lined up the Nickels "The medium size silver colored coin" to count them.

Collecting and counting pennies

We counted the dollar bills at the end.  As we collected and counted our coins, we graphed and recorded the amounts every child collected and counted.
We compared the amounts we collected and used words: equal more and less.

During Snack we read the book: "Quarters and Dimes and  Nickels and Pennies" By: Baila Olidort
David cannot understand how filling his charity box with coins will help poor people,
until his mother takes him downtown to deliver the money to a soup kitchen.

This gave the children a good understanding of what we would do with the money.

During Lunch together we came up with four different ways our money can help poor people.

1. We could either give it to a soup kitchen like David
2. Buy clothing for poor people just like in the book where they were wearing torn and old clothing
3. Buy Winter Accessories like hats, mittens and gloves
4. Give them Money to buy what they want
   
   The children vote/ chose by writing their names on the graph.

Skills:

Standard 0.5: Children exhibit pro-social behaviors.

Standard 3.3: Children demonstrate emergent reading Skills.
Standard 3.4: Children demonstrate emergent writing skills.

Standard 4.4: Children use mathematical knowledge to represent, communicate and solve problems in their environment.

Standard 6.1: Children identify unique characteristics of themselves, their families and others.                               

Standard 6.2: Children become contributing members of the classroom community.

                                             

The category with the most votes is clothes!
We will $26.35 that we collected to an organization called Yad Leah that buys clothes for poor children.

This is a perfect example of a Reggio Inspired day of learning. 
So unexpected yet so much learning and discovery!!