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 …
Apr 08
This week in Shalom Chaverim, the 0-3 year old children (and their grown ups!) set off to explore an important Jewish object– the mezuzzah! Together, we answered such questions as– what’s a mezuzzah? And… what’s inside there? We noticed the Hebrew letter shin– and we learned that inside is a special Jewish prayer, the Shema! …
Feb 01
Many of the children in Shteelim (‘Saplings’ for kindergarten) already associate שבת (Shabbat) with lighting nerot (candles), eating challah, drinking grape juice, and having shabbat dinner. This week we are moving beyond our initial associations with שבת (Shabbat) by exploring how we might make שבת (Shabbat) feel different from other days of the week. First, we heard …
Jan 25
In ענפים (Anafim, “branches” for 3rd-4th grade children), we’re not afraid to let things get a little messy. See, when you’re not afraid to experiment… and collaborate…. and really get your hands dirty… …you might just discover something beautiful you had inside of you, all along.
Jan 08
We’ve started our new theme–Shabbat! There are SO MANY ways to play Shabbat with our Shorashim friends! We’ve been getting Shabbat dinner ready in the מִטְבָּח (mitbach–kitchen). We’ve built houses to have our Shabbat in. We stamped the letters of Shabbat, ש shin, ב bet, ת tav and found ש shin, ב bet, ת tav in the sensory …
Dec 11
We see חנוכה (Chanukkah) everywhere! “Look a menorah!” “Another menorah! It has a helper candle.” We weren’t sure about this one because it looked a little different, but then we counted. It had שמונה (shmoneh–eight) places for נרות (nerot–candles) and one place for the שמש (shamash–helper candle). Must be a חנוכייה (chanukkiyah–Chanukkah menorah). A סביבון (sevivon–dreidel), too! We even had a Chanukkah …
