Name: Maisie Smith
Date registered: August 19, 2020
May 07
We have been in our theme, בִּיקוּר חוֹלִים (bikur cholim – visiting sick people), for four whole weeks now and throughout those four weeks, the children have been introduced to a variety of different Jewish texts that talk about visiting sick people. We’ve thought about our personal experiences with being sick and visiting sick people, what …
Apr 21
Last week in Nitzanim (“Buds,” for 1st grade children), we explored a text from the Talmud that said that when someone visits a sick person, they take away 1/60th of their suffering. To help us understand this idea, we looked at a picture of a pie with one tiny little slice taken out of it. …
Apr 07
This week, we began our new theme: בִּיקוּר חוֹלִים (bikur cholim – visiting sick people). As we often do, we started by investigating our personal connections to this theme. Simple questions like “have you ever been sick before?” and “what could a visitor do to help a sick person feel better?” helped us open up …
Mar 05
After wrapping up our שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu) theme and celebrating Purim together, we have shifted into getting ready for Pesach (Passover) at the Enrichment Center! As we often do with holidays, we began our opening of Pesach by asking children what they remember. We might show them some pictures that have to do with Pesach and …
Feb 17
The children in Nitzanim (“Buds” for 1st graders) are expert storytellers. They come to our sessions ready to tell all sorts of stories about what they played that day, something crazy that happened at school, or a silly story about grandma. We have been channeling all this amazing storytelling energy into our final project for …
Feb 05
To help us in our exploration of שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu), Nitzanim (“Buds” for 1st graders) have been experimenting with different modalities for expressing our שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu) makes us feel. We tried out drawing, using different shapes, lines and colors to show our שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu) feelings. Some children found that they didn’t even have words to describe the feelings …
Jan 20
Why do you think someone might choose to say שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu) when they get something new that they needed? The children in Nitzanim (“Buds” for 1st grade) have been exploring this question as a part of our שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ (Shehecheyanu) theme, and there have been all sorts of ideas (and questions!) that have come up in …
Dec 09
This week, we have spent lots of time celebrating! We have been celebrating finishing up our final projects for our תֵּבָה (Teyva – “Ark”) theme, and have been getting ready to celebrate חֲנוּכָּה (Chanukah)! In Nitzanim (“Buds” for 1st grade), this has looked like lots of joyous singing and dancing. On Tuesday, we had a special series …
Nov 24
In Anafim (“Branches” for 2nd and 3rd grade), our final projects are really coming along. Throughout this whole theme, we have been practicing sharing our ideas, connecting with our peers’ ideas, and respectfully disagreeing when we have a different idea. The children have done incredible work on this skill to the point where their conversations …
Nov 11
Part of how we help children deepen their questions and ideas about the text is through different kinds of creative exploration. This week in Nitzanim (“Buds” for 1st grade), we experimented with a new modality that we will be using for our final projects: collage! The children came up with all sorts of ways to …
