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 18
We’ve started our new theme, ידידות (yedidut – friendship). It’s easier to be a friend when we’re able to talk about how we’re feeling and understand how a friend feels. Educators wondered, What words do Nitzanimers have to describe what they’re feeling? What vocabulary do Nitzanimers have beyond “happy” and “sad?” We wanted to find out …
Mar 15
This year, I thought Nitzanimers were ready to understand the plagues not as cutesy little props to throw during the seder for entertainment, but as part of what took place for the Israelites to go free. I started by reminding children that the plagues happened to ALL of the Egyptians, and asked children if they …
Mar 15
Like Shteelim and Netzanim, Shorashim is helping to create our beautiful community Ma Tovu tent! (Check out this post to explore this incredible project). When the Shorashimers approached the white fabric and began to sponge on paint, they were excited to discover Morah Naomi had painted their שמות shemot (names) onto the cloth with a special paint …
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 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, …
Jan 30
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 …
Nov 20
Yesterday in Shteelim, the מורות (morot – educators) overheard children talk about how it gets dark much earlier in the day. We took this opportunity to listen and create an unscheduled activity – shadow puppets. The Shteelimers worked in pairs to be/create חיות (chayot – animals) with their bodies, animals that made it onto the …
