May 08
Must’ve been something in the air. During choice time, THREE Nitzanimers chose to do something creative with Hebrew. One boy decided to write the Shema from memory, sounding out the words. Another boy decided to play with the vowels he was reviewing. Again and again, he put vowels under every letter and happily …
May 02
On Sunday the Shorashimers and Shteelimers joined together in Yetzirah to record sound effects for a very anticipated movie coming soon to your local Jewish Enrichment Center theater! דוד & יונתן (David & Jonathan) is a story of yedidut, friendship, and many dramatic moments of emotion, action and secret codes. Shorashim and Shteelim have created …
May 02
It was hot in Beit Nitzanim. The children were restless. Whatever I had in my mind about what we would do next with the story of David and Yonatan was clearly NOT what the children were interested in doing. So I asked them: what do YOU think we should do? Wham! Total focus. Bouncing up and …
Apr 17
Way back in Fall, 2011, when the Jewish Enrichment Center opened, Nitzanimers had to learn to make appropriate choices during their “choice time.” Over and over, I would ask them, “What’s Jewish about what you’re doing?” They’d say, “I’ll draw a Jewish star on the side of this paper airplane.” I would say, “Make a …
Apr 12
We started a whole new unit this week – ידידות (yedidut – friendship). Shteelim, after learning the story of King Saul (Sha’ool) and David, began to make props in order to act out King Shaul’s story. The children made everything from decorating one of our chairs to be a throne, to making sheep with cotton …
Feb 28
Shteelim started talking about the upcoming holiday of Pesach today. We introduced the story, and began to form some questions we had about the story. Over the next few weeks, we will explore the Passover story in more detail, as well as understand some of the rituals and symbols, and also explore the Passover story …
Feb 21
Sometimes the best things in Nitzanim are unplanned. This year’s Nitzanim group loves to hear stories. For several months, children clamored for ghost, goblin, demon, and witch stories. Turns out there are many scary or spooky Jewish stories available for children, many of them by Eric A. Kimmel. Then we started reading Chelm stories. The …
Feb 14
This week Shteelim has been moving on with the basic story of Purim. Our Purim play has moved on to creating Purim puppets and using them with our Purim theater. The children decided on their own puppet characters and their own words while the Morah (teacher) prompted the Purim narrative. The children were able to fill …
Dec 19
Last Sunday when the Shorashim-ers were presented with materials to make Hanukkah decorations and play dreidle they combined everything on the table to invent a brand new game- dreidels on the loose! When a dreidel landed everyone picked up the decoration with a matching letter. As a morah, this was a great reminder in how …
Nov 30
Some children in Shteelim were itching for an Ivrit (Hebrew) challenge this week. We decided to see if we could make the letters א and ב with our bodies! The children had to try it out a few times and help each other position their גופים (gufim – bodies) until it was just right. Do …
