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 different choice.”
It’s different today. Children simply choose something that has Hebrew or Jewish content. As soon as choice time starts, I find children in Pinat Ivrit (our Hebrew corner), sounding out and writing the Hebrew names of their family members. Or they’re squished together of the couch, reading together. (One of our new favorites is a pamphlet about mammals in Israel.)
Here are some of the choices Nitzanimers made yesterday.
1. Hot game of Go Fish with our Pesach cards (still a huge hit, three weeks after Pesach!).
2. Big project: write a book in Hebrew.
3. Make an Israeli flag. It was Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Israeli Independence Day).
