What Happened in Grades 3-6 on Sunday, April 13...

Grade 3

Today in Mrs. Gabay's class, we used Philosophical Inquiry to explore the story of Pesach. It was fun to raise philosophical questions about the Haggadah text and use our inquiry skills to discover new insights into the holiday.

In Mrs. Zaas' class, we talked about how caring can be contagious. When we see other people perform G'milut Chasadim (Acts of Loving Kindness), we are more likely to do so as well. This also means that when we perform G'milut Chasadim, we are helping to inspire others to do so too!

Bringing our lesson to life, the Grade 3 students decided that they would like to collect pop tops for Ronald McDonald House. Mrs. Milgrom spoke with them about how we run collections at TEE and asked the class to spend some time researching how we get the pop tops to a Ronald McDonald House while we are on Pesach break.

In Hebrew, we reviewed the Four Questions. We also used plastic frogs to help us during Hebrew Through Movement, which was silly and fun!

Grade 4

In Mr. Feinberg's Judaic's class, we continued to look at the Torah through our practice of Philosophical Inquiry. We read Ki Tavo, one of the parshiot (Torah portions) that deals with God's laws for the Israelites as they cross over the Jordan River and into the land of Israel.

Mrs. Abrams read us a story about immigration and how many Jews came to America from Russia. We learned that these Jews were called Refusniks, because Russia often refused to give them visas to leave the country. American Jews worked hard to help these Russian Jews leave Russia, so that they could have more freedom in the United States.

Mrs. Abrams asked us what we would take with us if we had to leave our home like the Refusniks. 

We "filled our suitcases" with our ideas. It was interesting to see the different things that everyone wanted to bring with them!

Mr. Feinberg showed us a short movie about Passover called Bubba's Boarding School. After the film, we practiced the Four Questions, so we are ready go to for Monday night!

Grade 5

In Kehillah, Mrs. Milgrom asked the teachers to leave the room, so that we could work with our madrichim on a collection of our favorite things about our teachers. Mrs. Milgrom will include our thoughts in her end of year Thank You Notes. It was great to be able to give some positive feedback to our teachers who we know work really hard to prepare for our time together.

In Hebrew, we practiced the Four Questions, so that we are ready to go for each of our sedarim on Monday night! 

With Ms. Gonzalez, we baked kosher for Pesach brownies. Not only was it a lot of fun, but they brownies were delicious, which surprised some of us who couldn't imagine a tasty kosher for Pesach dessert!

Grade 6

First, with Mrs. Schulgaser, we talked about the ten plagues of Passover. We discussed different interpretations of them, including modern and humorous ones. We then created our own Afikoman covers using markers to illustrate our own thoughts about the ten plagues.

Next, we went into the sanctuary with Mr. Solomon and Ms. Killum to discuss the different steps of the Seder. We were then split into two teams and each given five parts of the storytelling part of the Seder that we presented to the class by reading, singing, and performing skits. We had a great time, and filled up our marble jars so that we can have a treat during our next class.