The second graders spent this week wondering about trees, writing questions that they would like to research, reading through books and website about trees all in an effort to choose research topics! Here are the topics your child chose:

Hudson and Sam- Oak Trees

Maddy- Coconut Trees

Shiri and Yael- Trees that grow in Israel

Harper and Jacob- Pollination

Hazel and Alex- Willow Trees

Kenzie- Blossom Trees

We are looking forward to doing our research and creation presentation so of our research in the next couple of weeks, in honor of the upcoming holiday of Tu Bishevat. We are hoping to showcase our work at the community wide Tu BiShevat celebration on 1/27 at the Audubon Center.

The seniors (and a few Juniors) used their choice time this week to create murals of our winter vocab words from last week, Rain and Snow, Geshem and Sheleg, שלג וגשם.

It has been so much fun getting back into Colors with the little ones. We focused on the following three colors this week:

Red- Adom-אדום

Blue-Kachol-כחול

Green- Yarok- ירוק

We made craft sticks covered in materials for each color, which will eventually become a craft stick rainbow when we finish learning all of the colors.

We also went to the gym today be play color tag! Ask your child about it.

 

Finally, we read the beautiful story by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso “Cain and Abel”. It’s a beautiful story about heavy and scary emotions, portrayed by the relationship between Brothers in the Torah- the first brother’s ever. It describes anger as a burning in the heart and feeling red, and uses throwing a stone as a metaphor for war and violence. But it concludes with the idea that when we don’t throw those stones, we are saving someone’s world. When we don’t use violence- we can save the whole world. Peace.

Also, enjoy this Gem- Juniors lighting candles at Shabbat Sing.

Shevat is here and Tu BiShevat, the new year for the trees, is coming!

Please do this homework by next week Monday, January 7th.

Help create excitement about our upcoming research projects about trees that grow in Israel.

We’re playing “Did ya know?”

Please use the following websites to read about trees. Find a new fact that you never knew about a tree before.  Post this idea in that comment section here. Begin your sentence with “Did ya know…”.

Example: Did you know that Methuselah, an estimated 4,765-year-old ancient Bristlecone Pine, is one of the oldest living trees in the world.

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/plants/trees.html

https://www.kidzone.ws/plants/trees.htm

https://study.com/academy/lesson/tree-facts-lesson-for-kids.html

Have fun!

Here is our video of the week to begin our learning about WINTER – CHOREF- חורף

 

We have been learning about parts of speech in Hebrew, practicing to identify nouns, adjectives and verbs in a sentence. Adjectives are tricky in Hebrew; one has to know the gender and number of the noun they are describing in order to correctly conjugate the adjective to match with both gender and number.

The students created slideshow flip-books as a summative assessment to this unit. I chose to showcase a couple here. Ask your child to show you his or hers.

Hanna’s Flipbook:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YAg_lkq2uXEv7maT8LCou9XtcFuBA_YfXfJ5jnlKMVo/edit?usp=sharing

Sadie’s Flipbook:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tBS-hP4U0zKOXFfeB4tAicKgLKyFDXr7o4pgxE5N8FU/edit#slide=id.p

The 1st and 2nd graders collaborated on an art midrash activity this morning as they each chose a different part of Joseph’s life to highlight through art. However, they could only use felt, glue and scissors. They were very creative. Check out the work in our hallways!

Kindergarten has spent a lot of time learning, wondering and creating our ideas about Noah’s Ark. We read many different versions of the story, used any materials to show the flood, and also explored with Rainbow Art today. Check out our video of the week below.

 

 

This week in Gan, we learned the Hebrew letter Daled, which makes a “d” sound. Here are some of the words we learned that start with daled:

 

דלת-Delet- Door

דג-Dag- Fish

דוב-Dov- Bear

דגל-Degel-Flag

To add to our learning, we created Israeli flags and learned all about them, including the colors Blue and white, and focusing on the two stripes and star of David in the middle. Here are two songs we sang about our Flags:

 

Project continuation from last week. enjoy the pics!

Congrats to Sam Lippman who was the 2nd grade rep for the Gimmelest Competition!!

In addition to making DELICIOUS sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), the 2nd graders immersed in Chanukah fun by doing chanukah innovation challenges.

On Tuesday, we FAILed as a class in trying to make our ozobot robots light every light of the menorah. But we had fun, and in the end, had them trace dreidels instead.

 

On Thursday, we used recycled materials to create either spinning tops or menorahs. Many of us are still in the process of finishing these crafts and will continue our work on Monday. SO MUCH FUN!