Hineni: I am Here

Today was my first day back in the classroom since Keith went to the hospital, and I can't begin to express how nourishing it was to spend the morning with your children. After hugs and a barrage of stories, we sat down to morning meeting and I asked the children to indulge me in singing a song to celebrate being together - a song we also sang with grandparents last Friday.

I learned the song, Hineni, from one of my mentors, Karina Zilberman from the 92st Y. Hineni literally means "Here I am" - and appears in the Torah when Abraham, Jacob and Moses respond to God's call - but I especially like Dr Erica Brown's interpretation:

In a world full of distractions, the proper way to translate “Hineni” today is “I am fully present.” I am fully present in my life. I am fully present with my children. I am fully present in my job. I am fully present when I am in conversation with you. I am fully present as a servant of God. This means paying closer attention to the sacred duties I assume and trying to live on higher ground. I am fully present as a Jew. I am fully present as a citizen of the world, partnering in its perfection. Being fully present today — with the challenges of technology — cannot be assumed. It is hard work; an aspiration.

There's nothing like a health scare to remind us of the importance of being fully present for one another, and it was quite moving to sing this song with your kids today.

Another highlight of the day came just before recess, when I had taken the children over to the synagogue to look closely at the Torah scrolls in the ark. After tefillah, but before we went up on the bimah, there was a disagreement between two children which resulted in one children pinching the other. I instructed the pincher, (henceforth known as P) to sit in a separate row because it was "not ok to solve problems using our hands."

At this point, P began to cry. I tried to move the activity along, and called all the children up to the bimah. P remained in the chair sobbing softly. As I spoke, the children quickly become distracted. One child, and then another, gingerly turned their back to me and went down to console P. Within a few moments I was alone on the bimah, yammering away about some highly important fact about Torah scrolls, while the children huddled around P.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to stop and, rather than admonish the children for not listening, thank them.  "You are right," I said. "It's always important to take care of our friends and their feelings. Even more important than Torah." To which one child replied  (I could not make this up if I tried) "well,  not MORE important. That kind of IS the Torah." There were some hugs, some smiles, and a return to the bimah.

As teacher we talk a lot about learning more from our students than they learn from us. I'm not sure that's ever been more true for me than today. Enjoy your children this weekend - they are treasures!

Did I mention we got a Get Well Book?

Shabbat Shalom!

Wood, shapes and all about books. And then there's the Opera.

We've been back from vacation for a little over two weeks, and it's been as busy as ever, if not a little busier. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is the opera, but I'm afraid I'm sworn to secrecy. Here's what I can share: we've planned the settings and the characters, and a problem that needs to be solved. We've written the lyrics to three songs and started a fourth, and have learned to sing the first three songs. We've begun decorating some scenery. And we are having a great time. The performance is scheduled for the morning of June 9th and we will be live-streaming for relatives, friends and opera fans who can't join us in person. It's one of my favorite times of year...

We're also in the midst of a unit on wood sculptures. After several days of exploring with wood of all shapes and sizes, children began creating their own individual structures. This requires patience, creativity and engineering as they figured out how to create sturdy bases and support delicate parts of their structures until the wood glue dried. They added to their structures every day for the past week, and many children finished yesterday. Others plan to continue to add more elements during explorations. We'll be working on setting up a gallery to display our creations that families can visit before, during and after school. This is *also* one of my favorite times of year...

Next week we'll write about and draw 2-d representation of our sculptures. Children who want to add color will also have the chance to paint them. Stay tuned for details.

In math, we've been learning about 2-d shapes -their names and features - seeing what we can do with shapes, and problem solving to complete pattern block puzzles. We've reinforced this learning by doing shape activities in Hebrew as well. Some of this work is on display in the hallway.

In writing, we've been studying all-about books - non-fiction texts. We've read books on  variety of topics and worked on individual and group books about topics we know a lot about. Yesterday, after planting a "latke" bed on the farm, children chose photos from our morning to write about - these will be on display in the Gan by the end of the day.

As always, this is just a small part of how we spend our days. Forgive me for the long gap in blog posts.

Shabbat Shalom!

Morah Amy

Be Silly, It's Adar

With the new moon started the Hebrew month of Adar, and with it, Crazy Adar Days. Pajama day, facial hair day, hero day.....it's been a decidedly un-serious two weeks, culminating with our pre-Purim celebration today.

At the start of Adar last week, we delved deeply into the story behind Purim as recorded in the Megillah - the Book of Esther. We examined the difference between a megillah scroll and a torah scroll and made a Venn diagram of their similarities and differences. We spent a few days really digging into the text using a simplified version of the original story that came home in folders last week. We played with and deepened this knowledge through discussion, dramatic play and art. You'll see giant murals of the characters of the story in our room, a Shushan palace in the imagination station and a smaller version in the block area (both decorated by the children), and a lot of BOO-ING whenever Haman's name was mentioned.

We also took advantage of the silliness of Adar to get a little silly with pictures of ourselves and used these activities to practice body parts, parts of the face, and some new sentence structures in Hebrew.
We created "dolls" for the castle, collages with swapped facial features, and rainbow colored faces. It was very motivating to have something so fun to talk about.

We learned about the mitzvot (commandments) of Purim - including giving gifts of food to one another and gifts to those in needs. We worked with our sixth grade buddies to prepare for both these mitzvot by planning and creating a bake sale to support the Northampton Survival Center. Children made posters with their buddies, and baked dozens of hamentashen - today we'll make signs for the sale. Please consider buying a few delicious hamentashen after school today!

Although the weather is taking a turn for the seriously cold, we took advantage of yesterday's springlike weather to learn about what goes in in trees beneath the bark - and to tap the maple tree in the parking lot. Once we've gathered enough sap, I'll be looking for volunteers to help supervise a day of boiling so we can have our own Gan sugar shack.

Even with all the silliness and joy, we've been working on our new handwriting books, plus and minus, and reading conferences. It just.....looked a little different.

Dreams of Ladders and Angels

We've been following the patriarchs and matriarchs on their journeys to and from Canaan. Most recently, we read about the rivalry between Avraham's grandsons - Esav and Yaakov (Jacob). When Esav discovers that Yaakov has tricked his father, Yitzhak, into giving him the first born blessing, he runs away from home. On the way, he dreams of a ladder reaching towards heaven with angels going up and down.

Gan students read this passage from the Torah with their sixth grade buddies and then worked in pairs to examine multiple works of art depicting this scene. (You can check it out the slide show I made for them here, if you are interested.) They looked for Yaakov and the angels in each picture, and talked together about some of the differences and similarities between the works of art. The Gan and sixth graders had so many interesting observations, some of which are posted on our new display.

Gan and sixth graders then began work on creating their own representations of Yaakov's dream using a range of materials. These are on display in the Gan, along with photos of them hard at work - they are much more impressive in real life, but here's a sneak preview.

We'll be spending a lot of time getting ready for Purim over the next two weeks - you might also be interested in this Purim event I'm leading at the Eric Carle Museum next Sunday. I'm very excited about the collaboration - please spread the word!

Wheat, Flight, and More

The last few weeks have been whirl of activity, and I'm going to try to give you a taste of some of the many ways we've been learning, working and playing.

Over the course of the summer, I was researching ways to bring engineering into the Gan and came across instructions for building a wind tunnel. I reached out to a few Gan parents from last year, and Micayla's dad, Jonathan Shefftz kindly rose to the challenge. 

The wind tunnel was a very popular area during explorations. For the first few days, children experimented with a variety of items, and sorted them between what flew and what didn't. After making some inferences based on their observations, I gave the children a design challenge - take a ping pong ball (that didn't float) and build something to make it float. Here are some of our tests:

In other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) news, we've been working on solidifying our coding skills. Last week, children worked in pairs to choreograph a dance for bee-bot using all of they commands they had learned. We tested the codes with a spontaneous dance party!

We integrated our study of Torah - specifically the story of Abraham and Sarah welcoming guests to their tent  - with some history and science as well. Sarah rushes to make bread for the visitor - we spent several lessons looking more closely at how she might have made that bread. Nili Simhai, the Educator at Abundance Farm - brought us sheaves of wheat and gave us a chance to identify and explore the parts of the plan. She also taught us about how to thresh and winnow with our hands and very simple tools. The following week, children had a chance to grind flour with a mortar and pestle, not unlike the ancient tools Abraham and Sarah would have used, and bake pita over the fire.

What else is going on? We're beginning a writing until on "how-to" books, doing lots of measurement in math, learning about names of items of clothing in Hebrew, and lots more. I'll try to update you again soon!