Sunday, November 22, 2015

What Happened in Grades 3-6 on Sunday, November 22

Grade 3


Grades 3-6 started our day in T'filah. Cantor Lawrence led us in prayer and Rabbi Denker told us the story of how Jacob fled the land if Israel for 20 years and when he returned he had to face his brother, with whom he had fought.


In our classroom, during Kehillah, we all shared our plans for Thanksgiving.


After Kehillah, in Judaics, we learned about a Torah portion called Kedoshim. In the portion, God outlines a list of mitzvot that help us act in holy ways. One example is treating people with kindness.



 

After working on our worksheets in small groups, we performed skits that brought to life the scenarios we were discussing.



Then, we created drawings that showed examples of both how we should act according to Parshat Kedoshin and how we should not act.

Grade 4


Grades 3-6 started our day in T'filah. Cantor Lawrence led us in prayer and Rabbi Denker told us the story of how Jacob fled the land if Israel for 20 years and when he returned he had to face his brother, with whom he had fought.


Back in the classroom, during Kehillah, we talked about our family Chanukah traditions.



In Art class, Mrs. Schulgasser taught us about Pop Art and how we could use this form of artistic expression to publicize the mitzvah of Chanukah (persumai mitzvah)


Here is what our pictures looked like at the end!


In Grade  Hebrew we learned the difference between long and short vowels.


Mr. Stone even helped us by getting us active in opening our hands up wide for long and putting them back together for short.

Grade 5


Grade 5 started our morning by re-listening to a song about Devorah the prophetess. Then, we split into groups of four and read midrashim about Devorah...


...Our groups used these midrashim to better understand the story of Devorah and what made her a great leader.



Using these same groups, we created our own midrashim about Devorah in the form of songs. Some people made raps, some made pop style songs and some of us even created dance moves to go along with our songs!


In Hebrew, we worked on decoding the G'vurot with a partner. When our madrich, Jadon, called out one of the lines and words and we read it correctly, we got the chance to try to make a basket!!

Grade 6

This morning our Grade 6 students did an amazing job creating individual wimples for each of their parshiot!


First, the artist stretched the canvas for us to work on.



Then we used water color paints to create our drawings.


Some of us came in with sketches and the artist showed us how we could transfer those into the silk.




















Sunday, November 15, 2015

What Happened in Grades K-2 on Sunday, November 15...

Kindergarten



Today we came in and got to color images of Shabbat during our opening activity. Normally we start our day with Circle Time, but today we did things differently! That is because we learned all about how Shabbat is different from all of the other days of the week.


Even though we really celebrate Shabbat on Friday evenings and on Saturday, Mrs. Bernstein helped us celebrate Shabbat in our classroom today. We did the blessing over the candles, grape juice and the challah.


Then we went to T'filah. We thanked God for all of the blessings in our lives, like food and clothes and family.


Back in our classroom we had Kehillah. Because today was Shabbat in our classroom, we had a special treat of cookies and music!


After Kehillah, we had Circle Time. During Circle Time, we talked about what we did on Shabbat and read a book about how we end Shabbat with a ceremony called Havdallah.


Keeping with our Shabbat theme, we made candle stick holders that we can use when we celebrate Shabbat with our families at home!

Grade 1


In Circle Time today, we shared what we did over the weekend and what we've done this week to help someone else.



Then, Ms. Levy told us that later on, we'd have the chance to interview Rabbi Denker, Cantor Lawrence and Mrs. Milgrom about their jobs at the synagogue. We divided up into two groups to prepare questions for the interviews.


In T'filah, Cantor talked to us about the importance of prayer. You can pray for lots of different things and today we focused on prayer as a way to express our gratitude for the wonderful things that we have in our lives.



After T'filah, we met with Rabbi Denker, Cantor Lawrence and Mrs. Milgrom and heard about the different roles that they have at the synagogue. Rabbi talked about how the word "rabbi" means "my teacher." Rabbi teaches lots of people and helps them when they have questions about life. Cantor also teaches people, but a lot of times, he uses music to help teach people and connect them to God. Mrs. Milgrom works with our teachers to create Jewish educational experiences for the students in Kindergarten - Grade 12 and works with Rabbi and Cantor to create educational opportunities for adults. 


In Art class, we talked about how our synagogue is like a home. Mrs. Schulgasser helped us make "houses" and we put different people from the synagogue into our "house." We also made thank you cards for the people who work at the synagogue to make it like a home!

Grade 2


When we began class, Grade 2 got a coloring sheet for today’s Hebrew letter. While we colored, we talked a little about what we learned last week to refresh our memories, then we began drawings to depict different commandments. 


Next we had Kehillah in class. We ate goldfish and drank water while still working on our commandment drawings. When snack finished, we went to T'filah. In T'filahwe talked about the story of Jacob, and how we, as people, make the world Kadosh



Back in class, we presented our drawings of the Ten Commandments in order. With this activity, we showed our classmates what we learned from the story Mrs. Henry read us. 



Afterward, we had Hebrew. We went to our workbooks and began our letter, Nun, which we had drawn earlier. We got into small groups with either Hailey, Mrs. Henry, or Jacob, and then we read words with the letter Nun for practice. 


To end the day in a fun way, we had Library. During Library we read an easy-to-understand version of stories of the bible, more specifically, Moses getting the 10 Commandments. As a treat, the librarian made us a Ten Commandments cake!