What Happened in Grades 3-6 on Sunday, December 8...

Grades 3 & 4

The 3^rd and 4^th grade had so much fun at their retreat this weekend!! They began their weekend with Shabbat dinner with their parents. The theme for the retreat was superheroes. Throughout the Shabbat evening service we stopped and talked with our parents some of the qualities a superhero needs and what makes us superheroes. After, we said goodbye to our parents for the night, we started a program with our teams that were split up into colors. The colors were green, orange, pink, salmon, yellow and blue. Each station had a different clue to take us to the next station in our scavenger hunt. Each station had a different challenge. One challenge we had was to put a prayer or blessing in order in ping pong balls. The station had a twist because we either had to move the ping pong balls with just our nose or even our feet! In another station we made Jewish symbols out of legos and in another station we even learned how to set up a Shabbat dinner table! Each group wrote a song about superheroes and got to sing it in front of everyone. Each station also had a secret in that room that we did not know about the temple. Did you know there is a door to the temple basement in the kitchen? Or that the Havdallah objects are kept in the cupboards by the ramp in the sanctuary? 

After our scavenger hunt, we got to get into our pajamas. There was a popcorn machine and we got to eat popcorn while we watched The Incredibles until bed, don’t worry we didn't go to bed too late. The next morning, we got fresh pancakes! We could choose between plain, chocolate chip, banana or even chocolate chip AND banana pancakes. They were so good! We had some free time and some of us even started a football game with a stuffed animal. Our next activity was more stations with our teams. In one station we had to make a human knot with bandannas and untangle ourselves without speaking, at another one we had to throw beanie babies across to the room each other, but what made it tricky was there were four beanie babies going around at once! The two other stations were having to make a house out of rope without overlapping or doubling the rope and we had to walk across a grid onto squares, but only one path could make it to the other side. With every activity that we did, we studied a Jewish text that spoke to the superhero quality that we learned about in doing that activity. Sadly, after this it was time to take a group photo and say goodbye. We had so much fun! Hopefully, there will be another retreat soon! 

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Grade 5

T'filah was pretty empty this morning as the Grade 3 & 4 students weren't at Religious School. We are really jealous that they got to go on their Retreat this weekend and can't wait for ours!

In Art class, we each got a part of the G'vurot (the section of the Amidah that talks about what God does for us that is heroic). We then took the part of the G'vurot that we were given and drew superheros that exemplified the heroic quality mentioned in the prayer. It was fun to learn more about how to draw people and it was great to be creative and come up with a way to visually depict what we are studying.

After Art, we spent time working with the G'vurot in Hebrew. We practiced both decoding (reading) and chanting the G'vurot and had to unscramble the flashcards to put the parts of the prayer in order.

Grade 6

In Mr. Solomon's class, we started our day with Hebrew Through Movement. At this point, we are able to give each other instructions completely in Hebrew. Our understanding of the vocabulary and our pronunciation is quite impressive!

We also began talking about the Hebrew root yud-tzadee-alef which has to do with leaving or being taken out. This root appears in many words in the Torah service, because we are taking the Torah out of the Ark! It also appears when we talk about how God took us out of Egypt.

With Ms. Killam, as our exploration of Israel continues, today we focused on understanding the ancient and modern timelines of Israel. One area that we looked at in particular is what nations have had control over Israel in the past and what that has meant for the Jewish people living in the Land of Israel.

Each of us took a different part of the material and designed a short presentation to teach our classmates what we learned. In this way, we divided and conquered - much like the theme of today's learning!

We also got a special treat - ice cream! Each day we work together to earn marbles for our Marble Jar. We earn these marbles by fulfilling our learning brit (contract). When the jar is full, we get to celebrate. This is the second celebration we've had this year!