Nov 03
The children in Shalom Chaverim (“Welcome, Friends!” for ages 0 – 3 and their grown-ups) are enthusiastically exploring Shabbat. They spent one session preparing for Shabbat by pretending to wash dishes, sweep the floor, make soup, and set a Shabbat table. During the second session they used watercolors on cloth napkins to create challah covers. During last …
Oct 04
The children of Shalom Chaverim (“Welcome Friends!” for ages 0 – 3 and their grown-ups) explored Torahs. They used magnifying glasses to examine a non-kosher Torah, noticing Hebrew letters on the yellowish parchment. Then they created their own page of Torah with Hebrew-letter stickers on yellowish paper. Families built an aron, an “ark” or special house, for …
Aug 27
Camp is in full swing, we are getting to know each other, playing fun games together and this week we are learning about Sh’mitah. Sh’mitah can be found in the Torah in several places, including the book of Exodus, chapter 23, the book of Leviticus, chapter 25 and the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 15. These …
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 …
Nov 06
What helps you feel safe? In Shorashim (‘roots’ for nursery) and Shteelim (‘saplings’ for Kindergarten), we spent some time exploring the objects, places and routines in our lives that make us feel safe. By the end of our time together, we were making connections to the תֵּבָה (teyva – “ark”) being a place of safety …
Jan 20
Tu B’Shevat is a special holiday for young children. The past two weeks in Shalom Chaverim have been all about exploring trees, growing things, and planting. Look at all of the wonderful things we did! There were trees to count, to touch, and to press into play dough. We even built our own trees using …
Dec 18
How to make a Chanukah puppet show by Nitzanim (“Buds” for first grade). Step 1:Make a list of all the characters in the Chanukah* story. Then, make puppets, props, and backdrops. It helps to work with a buddy. Nitzanim children decided that we needed puppets to represent Jewish people, Syrian Greeks, King Antiochus, and Judah …
Nov 01
This week in Anafim v’Alonim (“Branches” for 4th grade and “Oak trees” for 5th and 6th grades), we’ve been expanding our ideas about Ya’akov v’Esav (Jacob and Esau) while further exploring our collage and building modalities. With their chavrutah (text study partner), children have studied Bereishit (Genesis) 32 & 33, and as we move closer to synthesizing the texts, …
Oct 24
In Anafim (“Branches” for 2nd and 3rd graders), we have been noticing how different artistic modalities allow us to generate new ideas about our Ya’akov v’Esav text. Through tiny building, watercolor, collage and more, we’ve explored what the characters in the text have been feeling, thinking, and doing. Lately, we’ve found making big buildings with …
Oct 21
For the past two weeks, the zero-three year olds and their grown-ups in Shalom Chaverim have been investigating a special Jewish book– the Torah! We unrolled a Torah together, and peered inside. We discovered lots of Hebrew letters written on soft parchment! We cared for our own (toddler-friendly!) Torah by building it an aron hakodesh …
