Shorashim and Shteelim spent another Sunday morning collaborating and learning from one another. Using the story of David and Jonathan, as well as Yeta the Beautiful Hen (a particularly awesome Yiddish/English/Spanish children’s book), both groups have explored questions like, “What is a friend? What do friends do together? How do I know if someone is …
Tag Archive: cooperative learning
Apr 12
Friendly Yadayim (Hands)
This past Sunday our Shorashimers paid a visit to Beyt Shteelim and were paired up for the day. How exciting to experience a glimpse of their upcoming year! And, how friendly it was for the Shteelimers to welcome them and work side by side! In Yetzirah, older and younger children traced ידים (yadayim – hands) …
Mar 15
Shteelim Pesach Play
Written 100% as dictated by Shteelim – We used the Torah, a Haggadah, and some children’s books to help us figure out the details. When we got stuck on why Moshe took Aaron with him, we got out a Tanach, and read the actual Torah text to see what it said. The 5773 Shteelim …
Mar 01
The Torah- Up Close and Personal!
Shteelimers gathered around the Torah this week… Girl 1: Wow. It’s sparkling. Morah Miryam: What do you see? Boy 1: It’s like an army of letters. Morah Miryam: Oh, show us where you see an army. Boy 1. In all the lined up letters. Like Pharaoh’s army is some of the letters and the Hebrews …
Feb 14
A Purim Puppet Show!
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 …
Feb 05
Magical Moments From Our Detective Work
What book is your copied page from? “This is a prayerbook. The Torah has stories. The Torah has prayers, but they’re in the story. There’s no stories here, so this is a prayerbook.” “If I say this prayer, I’m blessing the people on earth.” What are the rabbis doing on this page of Talmud? “Last year, …
Feb 03
Adventures with Yadaim
Today Shorashim did two projects all about ידיים Yadaim (hands). To start, we made ידיים Yadaim and אצבעות Etzbaot (fingers) out of paper hands, pasta nails, paint, and watches/ bracelets made of pipe cleaners and puff balls. Then we moved from making Yadaim to exploring how we use our Yadaim in the world. The Shorashimers …
Jan 30
Cooperative Talmud Work
First, we scanned the page for the words we were looking for. Every Nitzanimer is exploring a set of words from one of the morning ברכות (berakhot – blessings), e.g., poke’ach ivrim. We highlighted the words. Then we set out to figure out what book our copied page was from. ”This is the book our page …
Jan 24
Creating a Morning Chart!
This week in Shteelim we decided to make a morning chart to compare and contrast our morning routines with our friends. A morah (teacher) drew in different kinds of pictures for getting ready in the morning. For the pictures, we explained that the rabbis said berakhot (blessings) for their morning routines. One child asked, “Even …
















