Trip to Kotel, Migdal David/David's Citadel

The other morning, when Rafi got up, I asked him what he wanted to do that day.

 "I want to go on a trip to the Kotel" he tells me.

To be honest, I wasn't in the mood to go to the kotel at first. But then I thought about it- why not? It would  be good to get out, have some fresh air, etc... And since Chanuka was coming, and on Chanuka we're celebrating the rededication of the Bais Hamikdash, I figured why not take a trip.

But only if the kids were willing to make it into a learning experience. I told the kids about the notes that people write and stick in the walls of the Kotel with their bakashos to Hashem. I asked Rafi what he wanted to ask Hashem for. He told me Moshiach, money, and to be healthy and strong, and peace.
I wrote out his requests on a piece of paper in Hebrew for him to copy onto another note. He wanted to know why specifically in Hebrew, so I told him about how Hebrew is Hashem's special language, that's the language we daven in, and that's the language that the Torah is in. I used this opportunity to practice some of the Hebrew words he knew, as well as teaching him more.
Midway through he decided he'd rather write in English (he's not used to writing much in Hebrew, and was upset that his letters weren't coming out perfectly), so I then wrote the rest of the note in English for him to copy.
He then signed it with his name.

Once the preparations were made, we went to wait for the bus.

Parshas Noach- Biology, Hilchos Kashrus, Writing, Drawing, Arithmetic, Geometry, Earth Science- All in One

For parshas Noach, I asked Rafi (5) and Moishy (3) if they wanted to hear and act out a parsha story. They were very eager to do so.
First, we sorted through the toys and took out all the blocks and animals and brought them to the table.

So I started telling them the story about Noach and the Teiva, and told them they were going to both be Noach. I told them about the state of the world during Noach's time, and that the world was so bad that Hashem wanted to destroy the world and start again.

I told them that as Noach, they should build a boat that is a big rectangle, out of the blocks, because Hashem was going to destroy the world besides for what was on the boat. Through trial and error, they figured out how to use the various shaped blocks to build a wall a few blocks high.

Then they filled it with the animals- two of the not kosher and 7 of the kosher animals. I explained to them what makes an animal kosher- chewing their cud and having split hooves, and explained a little about the anatomy of ruminants. We went through the animals and found which ones had split hooves and chewed their cud, and then tried to find 7 of those to put in the teiva.
Well, we don't have 7 of any toy animals, so we did a little subtraction- subtracting however many animals we had from 7, to see how many more we needed. We used paper to draw rough pictures of the different animals to complete how many animals were needed, labeled them so we'd know which was which, cut it out, and put it into the teiva. For the animals that weren't kosher, we put in only 2, and the rest of the animals of that type, we put "in the garbage" (a toy one), because those animals wouldn't survive the flood.

I told them about what the flood was like, but to give them a better idea of what I meant by a flood, I showed them a youtube video of a river overflowing and flooding a parking lot, washing away a whole bunch of cars, and the kids were awestruck.
I told them that that flood was nothing big. I showed them, then, a few videos of the tsunamis in Japan and South Asia, and they were amazed at the sheer magnitude of the thing.

We then learned about how tsunamis started via earthquakes, learned about earthquakes being started by plates of the Earth's crust shifting and banging into each other, which then transitioned into learning about volcanos, etc...

I put on two songs about Noach- a different version of this same song (can't find it now)-
The Lord Said to Noah There's Gonna Be a Floody Floody- be careful when looking for versions of this song- its a Christian song, and some of the versions are about "Y-w-h" told Noah, and yea... not kosher for frum Jews.
I also liked and played this song from 613 Torah Avenue on Parshas Noach.
http://www.chabad.org/kids/article_cdo/aid/519239/jewish/Noach.htm