This week we continued gettting ready for Hannukah! We started with check ins and then went right into Hebrew where we traced the letters of Hannukah vocab words on the board while discussing their revelance. After that we had three activities to choose from, making a draidel out of cardstock, a hannukah word search, and a hannukah crossword puzzle. After snack we continued working on the songs we learned last week, and we caouldnt resist watching the Macabeats video a few more times! Finally, we picked our parts and read through a very cute Hannukah play.

This week we started with check-ins and then introduced vowels. We worked on worksheets and reading simple words using our new skill. Then, we continued of prayer learning with the v’ahavta. We read the english translation and discussed the meaning. After snack we continued with our torah study, first recapping where we had left off in the book of bereshit. Then we discussed the story of Joseph and made fortune tellers, since Joseph had an ability to interpret dreams and give guidance for the future.

This week we began with a round of rose, bud, thorn about the past week. Next, we played bingo with the aleph bet to finish out our learning. We are going to move on to reading Hebrew after break! We also continued our discussion about the v’ahavta and talked about the practice of wearing tefillin. After snack, we went over the five books of the torah since we finished the book of bereshit last week and were starting exodus. We discussed the first chapter of the book of exodus and each student was given a discussion question to find the answer to in a summary video. Finally, we discussed the parsha and did an art project of baby moses in the nile river.

For our first class back from winter break we spent the beginning of class telling each other all the cool stuff we did! Then we moved on to Hebrew where we started learning the names of numbers and the number system gematria. Then we talked about the mezuzah and listened to the chanting of the v’ahavta, starting to get an idea of what the prayer sounds like in a service. Once we were done with snack we continued our life cycle learning with a lesson about bar/bat/bnai mitzvot. Students discussed the aspects of a bar mitzvah they new and we filled in the gaps together. Finally, we learned about parshat shemot and had a fantastic discussion about different artisitc representations of the exodus from egypt.

This week was a really great week! We started with check-ins and jumped right back into the v’ahavta. We worked on reading the first line in Hebrew with vowels and practiced the tune. Then we moved on to Hebrew where we learned the months of the year, talked about what a lunar calendar is, and learned how to write the date. To fingure out how to write the date we combined our new skills with the months as well as our gematria skills. Next, we learned about the holiday of tu b’shvat (our date writing came in handy for understanding why that is the name of the holiday) and played a fun matching game with tu b’shvat vocab including the seven species. Finally, we connected all that learning to the jewish value of tikkun olam and discussed MLK day (the reason we didnt have class the week before) and civil rights movement, some big problems in our world right now, and what we can do in our everyday lives to uphold the value of tikkun olam.