The Beginning of our Second Cycle

On Saturday at Havurah we got reacquainted with one another as we hadn't seen each other in a few weeks! We even welcomed a new student into our classroom and so decided to revisit all of our familiar blessings, Hebrew letters, art projects, and songs.

We began the day playing Simon-Says...in HEBREW (B'Ivrit). The kids repeated the words back to us as they gestured to their face.  

Aynayim are eyes
Ahf is nose
Ohznayim are ears
Peh is mouth

We will continue to practice throughout Havurah!

As always, we blessed the grape juice, the Challah and prepared for our meeting with Joyce by telling stories of Channukah and Thanksgiving.

We were so excited to welcome Joyce -- the Storytelling Queen into our classroom. She lit up the face of every child in the classroom with her magic story wand, the Tale of Channa and her Shabbat Dress as well as the epic Magic Dreidels. The class is truly beginning to learn what it takes to create a story and realizing that they themselves are storytellers of their own.



Below you can find the story we composed as a class with cards of images Joyce brought to class. It  was a beautiful collaboration as each student spoke with a unique voice adding their own twist to every change of the sentence:

Once upon a time there was a castle in the middle of a big lawn -- there was a road leading up to the castle, and inside, people were living. There was a princess reading in the castle, and there was a mouse trying to annoy the story by talking in front of the middle of the story. Outside the castle there was a ferry in the sky. In the castle, there was a king who was looking for the princess. The king found a key -- the key was to the room where the princess lived. There was a witch who was trying to unlock the door but she couldn't. The witch got stuck in the bottle - somebody put her in there. The dragon was trying to get in the door but he thought it was water and then he blew fire and then the fire flew back in his mouth and then the dragon went away. The dragon found a diamond ring when he was walking away, then he opened the door. The princess found the diamond ring and it became hers. And then lightning struck the castle. And then a pirate boat came and then the queen walked off the pirate boat. She got off the boat and went back to the castle and she said, "What's Going On? Where's my diamond Ring?!" and the search began again for a new diamond ring.
To Be Continued...

To finish the day we had an assortment of activities -- we built kingdoms and castles with blocks, Nate specifically had a blast playing with the different shapes and sizes of two Russian dolls, and of course we contributed to each of our Aleph-Bet books with markers, stamps, and glu-able letters.

Finally we made the letters we know so far (Aleph, Bet, Gimmel and Daled) with our bodies both in yogic positions and also together as small teams!