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'filah, we 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!