May 16
To celebrate Shavuot, Shteelim reenacted the story of Har Sinai (Mt. Sinai). A beautiful midrash (rabbinic tale/ interpretation) about the story of Sinai is that all Jewish people (past and future, young and old, Jew by birth and Jew by choice) were at Sinai together. We used our imaginations to travel out of Egypt, across …
May 07
This week the morot (educators) posed a big question to the Shteelimers in order to further explore the story of David and Shaul. And so we asked, ”How do you think David felt becoming the King’s harp player?” The Shteelimers had the following ideas. – Happy because he wanted to be a harp player/ musician and …
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 24
This week in Yetzirah, both Shteelim and Nitzanim dove head first into the story of David and King Shaul in all it’s complexity of characters, secret codes and emotional scenes. Shteelim first worked beyachad [together] to create visual aids that would then be used during their play to cue scenes and characters. Second, the Shteelimers …
Apr 12
This week, Nitzanim completed one final investigation of our mysterious words (that we saw first in these morning blessings). We’ve seen what our mysterious words are in the Torah (something God does), in the Talmud (a discussion among the early rabbis about what to say when we get dressed and ready for the day), and …
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 …
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 …
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 01
From Rebecca: Beth Niestat is mom to Miriam (Nitzanim) and Sam (4th grade). When I heard about their family’s Torah study based on our Keshet exploration this fall, I was on intensely curious how it would turn out. I love how Beth captures the reality of home life as a full-time working parent with dreams …
