May 23
This past week, the Shteelimers were given new puzzles to explore Hebrew letters. When the children saw that both puzzles could be figured out by arranging the Aleph Beit in order, they got to work! The strategies they used were all cooperative and mostly carried out without any guiding hints from the morot (educators). This …
May 23
This week, Nitzanim filmed our show about David and Yonatan. (Oh, my!) We assembled the sets, using shrinky-dink props and shoebox sets we’d made in yetzirah. We showed each other our puppet scenes to get feedback from fellow Nitzanimers. We read our scenes out loud again using the storybook we made, to recall details from …
Apr 25
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 …
Apr 12
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
I missed getting pictures of some of the plagues, but Nitzanimers DID act out of the plagues!
Mar 15
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
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
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
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
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 …
