What Happened in Grades 3-6 on Sunday, November 2...

Grade 3

First in Mrs. Zaas’ class we made slips of paper with things we think about when we hear the word Shabbat.

Then we glued those slips of paper to a big piece of construction paper, making hand made wordles about Shabbat! This activity helped us further explore how Shabbat is different, as we seek to understand what it means for time to be holy.

In Mrs. Gabay’s class, we each got a different version of the Torah. In reading from different translations, we got to see how every translator interprets the Hebrew differently. Today, we focused specifically on the first line in Bereshit, Genesis.

We raised questions about the text that relate to what God can and can't do. We realized that each of us has our own understanding of how God works in the world.

Then in Hebrew class, we talked about the letters and vowels we knew, and wrote them on the board and on flashcards to help us learn them and review them at home.

Grade 4

Don't forget to sign up your student up for the Grade 3 & 4 Retreat! Also, a friendly reminder that the Grade 4 students will be doing a bake sale in two weeks to help raise Tzedakah as a part of being upstanders in our community.

Today, because of a special program for Grade 6 in the Social Hall, we had Kehillah in our classroom. That gave us a chance to learn the words to HaTikvah. While we sing Israel's national anthem each week, we don't always get a chance to look at the words, so this was a great way to make sure that we are saying them correctly.

In Judaics with Mr. Stone, we talked about how acts of G'milut Chasadim impact our lives at home. This is called Shalom Bayit, the Jewish value of keeping peace at home. We came up with different scenarios of when we need to consider Shalom Bayit. For example, if we are given the task of unloading the dishwasher, but then get a call from a friend to go to a movie and need to leave immediately to make the movie on time - what should we do? We decided that a great way to handle this situation is to ask if someone in our family could do our job (unload the dishwasher) and do a job for them later that day or later in the week.

In Judaics with Mrs. Abrams, we read about how Abraham bargained with God to try to save Sodom and Gemorah. In this story, Abraham acts as an upstander, taking a risk by negotiating with God in trying to save the cities. It also shows us that even if there are only a few good people, it is better than none!

Afterwards, we worked on a biopoem. These poems help us express our thoughts and feelings about famous upstanders that we've learned about at Religious School or in public school.

In Hebrew, we learned about the suffix nun + shuruk, pronounced "noo." This means "our." We also reviewed the root mem + lamed + chaf sofit, which means "ruler." Lastly, we spent time with one of the post prevalent roots that we've encountered, bet + resh + chaf sofit, which means "bless." 

Grade 5

In Ms. Silverstein's Judaics class, we started by reviewing what we learned last week about the prophetess Devorah. We raised a lot of great questions about the story and as the text didn't provide answers, we made up our own midrashim (extra biblical stories that help fill in the details).

As we are learning from the prophets what it means to be a leader and make the right choice in difficult circumstances, we then did an activity where we had to make a choice about something by standing at the poster that corresponded to our choice. The scenario we were given was that our parents got a call that one of our friends was doing something illegal. we had to choose whether we would fess up to our parents about what our friends were doing or "protect" our friends by keeping quiet. As your student what he/she chose!

In Mrs. Zamir's Judaics class, we acted out different scenarios that demonstrate the power of symbols as demonstrative of a significant agreement between God and people. We acted out both the rainbow (as it pertains to the story of Noach)...

... and blood (as it pertains to the death of the firstborn in the Pesach story).

In Hebrew, we did several "seek and find" activities. These are activities where we seek out words, roots, or phrases in the prayers. Our activities today helped us interact with the words in the Avot v'Imahot.

Grade 6

Today in sixth grade, we had an amazing program where we designed and completed our wimples. At the first part of the Journey Continues program, we began designing and planning what we wanted our wimples to look like. These wimples will be used at our B’nai Mitzvah ceremonies and later at our Confirmation. After transferring the designs, we put down a special fluid over the lines in our designs so that the watercolor would stay within the lines and the lines would remain white. Then, we painted the end designs with our favorite colors. Lastly, we were told to soak the background with water and apply a lighter paint. Also, if we wanted, we could sprinkle salt to create a special design. The salt made the paint spread out in a really cool way. Now we will wait for it all to dry and then we will remove the salt. This program was such a blast and helped us all get excited for our B’nai Mitzvah ceremonies.