Class Update – Pre-School, January 2010

Today we got to celebrate Tu B’shevat together! We started the day with song, of course, and then went to our classroom to say our “shaloms” to one another. We then worked on our Humanistic Judaism coloring books and talked about what it means to be a Humanist. We talked about how we are all connected to one another, in a big world family, just as we have a family in our own home and a Jewish family. We found it helpful to talk about the “chain” of connection that we learned about when discussing our Jewish family.

After that, we moved on to celebrating the earth. We learned the hebrew word olam, meaning earth, and practiced the word by playing our very fun “olam, olam, world” version of duck duck goose. We always have a good time with that game! We then went downstairs to read a story about appreciating the earth and talking about what we can do to make the earth a better place. Then we go to doing just that- we planted some seeds- basil, thyme, and a flower- and hopefully we’ll all see them grow big and tall soon enough!

Class Update – Juniors, January 2010

At the January juniors class session, students learned about Yiddish and the persistence of many Yiddish terms in contemporary English speech. Students received copies of these Yiddish words/terms commonly used in English–written out in standard Yiddish orthography–and transliterated them using a phonetic guide to the Yiddish alphabet. Then members of the class took turns sharing their work, reading aloud words like “schlep,” “shpiel,” “bagel,” and “mazel tov” to the group, and we played a large-group matching game to pair the Yiddish words with their definitions in English. Afterward, students wrote humorous short stories/monologues incorporating all of the Yiddish vocabulary discussed, and read completed work to the class. The morning wrapped up with more service-project discussion; the group voted on different project options and moved forward with plans to volunteer at a Twin Cities soup kitchen (details forthcoming–project is planned for April).

Class Update – Middles, January 2010

The focus of the session was on Tu B’Shevat and trivia was back! We played Tu B’Shevat trivia to learn more about the Jewish holiday that essentially celebrates trees, nature and agriculture. We talked about everything from the ancient origins of the holiday (celebration and worship of the goddess Asherah) to the foods we eat (typically fruits and nuts that grow in Israel) and we even talked about what a Kibbutz is (a communal “village” in Israel).

After trivia, we read a series of poems about trees including one from Karen Shragg, a poet from Richfield, MN. The kids had the opportunity to share what they felt the poets were saying through their poetry. Each student then created their own tree poem. It was a combination of art and poetry, where they both wrote a poem and depicted an image of a tree on the page as well. Some drew a tree and wrote the poem n it, some wrote the poem around their tree and some wrote the words in the shape of a tree. If any parents would like to email us their child’s poem, we can certainly post here on WordPress!

Before joining the adults for the Tu B’Shevat seder we spent a few minutes on some Hebrew words related to Tu B’Shevat. It would be great if the parents would spend a few minutes going over these words with their children prior to the next session.

This link includes our Tu B’Shevat Trivia, the poems we read and the Tu B’Shevat Hebrew words.

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