Notes for the Kotel

My family is going to Israel. R. is very excited. She has learned quite a bit about Israel, having been first in a Jewish preschool and now in a Jewish Day School, and is ready for the trip. One special thing R. has on her schedule in Israel is putting notes in the Kotel (Western/Wailing Wall) for her class. The notes are in a ziplock. She knows she has a very important job. Many of them have the word "private" written on the outside and R. made it very clear to my husband and I that we are not to read her friends' notes, that they are private prayers and requests to G-d.

Amy Ripps visits for Shabbat Circle

A week ago we had a really special visit from Amy Ripps, the Director of Education at Beth Meyer Synagogue. She was the visiting Jewish Educator during Shabbat Circle.

Amy, who is always a terrific story teller, told the tale of a bear who is hanging out in a building in Brooklyn, steeling the honey for Grandmother's Shabbat kugel as family members return from the store. The grandmother keeps repeating to the members of her family who come back from the store with no honey "But there are NO BEARS IN BROOKLYN." The children all joined in a chanted this chorus with Amy, giggling. Finally the Grandmother goes to the store herself. When she is harrassed by the bear she discovers that he is lost and invites him to Shabbat dinner. I love this story because it is a wonderful, funny way to teach that one should open their heart and their home to the person who has nowhere to go for Shabbat and Holidays.

In addition to Amy's story, many of the students read entries from their classroom journals to the group. Some of the entries were short, some of them were very long. What I always find amazing is how the students sit patiently and listen to their classmates, applauding at the end of each story. One little girl read a very long story about all sorts of weird things that kept showing up in her lunchbox. Sometimes it was gross. Sometimes it was silly, but she read the whole story and everyone listened attentively. She wasn't rushed or cut off, even when it was clear that we were going to run out of time, because allowing a little girl to read her entire story is very important.

This is another wonderful thing about being in a small school with an engaged population of parents. We ran out of time. Parents arrived and stood around the classroom, but nobody took their child. There was no carpool line that needed to be managed. Everyone waited patiently and listened to the end of Shabbat Circle. Even the tween older sister who had run in to get her brother, whose Mother was waiting in a running car in the parking lot understood that the right thing to do was just to wait, enjoy listening to the kids read their journal entries, to Amy telling her story, and to sing L'cha Dodi together to welcome the upcoming Sabbath.

And here's a letter from Morah Leah, the Judaics teacher. Just to clarify, this is a K-2 class she's talking about. I did cut out one paragraph about their Hebrew reading homework. Same with the letter from Morah Erin. I edited out some specific assignment instructions.

Dear Parents,
We are busy doing many things in our Judaic Studies lessons. Here is an update of what we have been covering.

Tefillah/Prayer
We are progressing nicely through the prayer of “Ashrei” – we sing it every day and try to follow along with most of the words. Just this week we have finished the entire prayer, which is quite an accomplishment. The children feel very proud of being able to sing along to a very long prayer. We will continue practicing it so the students can become even more fluent in their reading.

Chumash/Bible Study
We are continuing reading and translating the Chumash in its original text. At this stage, a lot of the singing/reading/translating is done by memory. We are comparing similar words and looking for clues as we decipher the translations. I did send home some Chumash review homework and had varied results. Some of the students were frustrated when they tried reviewing at home. For now, I will keep the reviewing in the classroom until they feel more confident. If your child would enjoy reviewing at home, you might try showing them a Chumash opened to the first chapter of Beraisheit. The book we use in school is in large print, color-coded and is very child-friendly, but it is important for the children to see that these ancient words are the same in all different types of Chumashim, as well as in any Torah they will ever see.

Tu B’Shvat – The New Year for Trees
The topic of Tu B’Shvat has been filling our classroom – the bookshelves feature special tree-themed books, our walls are covered with artwork depicting this holiday and even our classroom door has some extraordinary artwork and reflections on giving trees.
I read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree to the class and we had a fascinating discussion about the question: Who is YOUR Giving Tree? The children all had different answers and it was so interesting to hear all the different perspectives on giving and receiving.
We discussed the lessons that trees can teach us and the responsibility we have to sustain trees and all living things. Our class is very environmentally aware and brainstormed for ideas of how to take care of our world to make it a place where things can grow in a safe and healthy way.
The children each imagined “What kind of tree would I be?” Each child’s unique personality was reflected in their artwork and their choice of tree.
The children have been singing Tu B’Shvat songs as well as learning the names of various fruits and grains in Hebrew. They will make their own memory matching game to take home and practice the “Shiva Minim” – The 7 types of fruit and grains that are special to Israel and that are talked about in the Torah.
To end our Tu B’Shvat unit, we will be tasting an assortment of fruits and comparing and contrasting them, using all of our senses.
Have a Happy Tu B’Shvat!
Morah Leah Herman

I love the letters I get from the teachers. Here's one from Morah Erin. Her enthusiasm is palpable.

Dear Parents and Friends,
What a wonderful beginning to a new year! First and foremost, I would like to say an official welcome to the Sh----- family. H------- joined us the first day back from winter break making First Grade student number eight (As the children and I would say- “Eight is great”!). She has been with us two weeks and has told me on more than one occasion that she is enjoying being at JAWC. Hats off to each of the other children for their genuine caring and helpfulness to make H-------’s transition a smooth one!

We have been busy learning about amphibians, reptiles and spiders the last few weeks. We experienced firsthand what it is like to have to molt like a snake at Science Lab last week. This week, we learned some amazing facts about spiders. Do you know?
1. What animal group spiders belong to and other animals in the same group?
2. How many eyes a spider has?
3. How many sets of spinnerets most spiders have?
4. If a spider’s web gets destroyed what it will sometimes do before building a new one?
Your children sure do-ask them and find out!

This week we followed directions to an experiment many of the children read about in one of our Leveled Reading books, Earth’s Riches. As each of them read this book, they asked/begged to make their own salt crystals. We now have several jars of colored salt crystals beginning to form along the edge of the window in our Science room. If you have a moment when you drop your child off in the morning or pick up in the afternoon, come in and take a peek!

Several of our students have been recipients of thank you letters recently. Several of the soldiers that we sent care packages to in December have sent us many beautiful letters. One soldier wrote: “Your kind words remind us why we are here and why we serve. It (your package) helped to soften the separation we feel at not being with our families. We feel honored and blessed to love in a nation and serve such fine young people like yourselves.” It is amazing how such a little bit of effort can have such a powerful impact!

We discussed the earthquake in Haiti this week. We learned: where Haiti is on the map, that for every one person who works, there is one person who does not and those who do work only make a little more than two dollars per day. At Shabbat Circle, Rabbi Aaron had each of the children give extra tzedakah so the school could make a donation to the disaster relief fund.

This afternoon, we read an amazing book that Syndey and her family brought in about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Hershel. It told of both of the men’s lives and struggles. It led to a discussion about prejudice, being open minded and standing up for what you believe in. WOW!

I am happy to announce that our Second Grade girls did a remarkable job reading at Temple Beth Or Preschool last month. They have been invited to come back this month to read to the four year old classes again! These young ladies are also going to pair up and be a “reading buddy” with a four year old from Hillel Preschool every Thursday afternoon beginning in February.

Another big Thank You goes to our fabulous Art Teacher, Debbie Secan. She came in this afternoon and did a lesson on shading, sketching animals and scratch art. I hung several of the student’s creations on the board and windows in our Science room. As I was hanging things up, one student remarked, “That’s A LOT of animals!” Please stop in and see the gallery we enjoyed making.
Have a fabulous l-o-n-g weekend,
Morah Erin

Lunchtime Visit

I had to take R. to a appointment mid-day today, and when I dropped her back off, I got such a nice warm fuzzy feeling. When we arrived the other kids were in another room eating lunch, so only the general studies teacher, Erin, and May Berman, a retired teacher and volunteer, were in the classroom. R. had eaten her lunch in the car so she decided to stay in the classroom with May and Erin and work on her journal, the daily writing they do every day. She happily went to gather her journal box and brought it to the table, together with the Starbucks hot cocoa we picked up on the way in. She seemed perfectly content, sitting at her desk, writing, and drinking her hot cocoa, getting lots of attention from Erin and May. Then I dropped in on the rest of the class. They were sitting around a big table in the synagogue's kiddush room, eating and giggling with Jodi Gore. Why were they all giggling? They were doing Mad Libs with Jodi while eating lunch!

Hands-On Mitzvah Projects

This fall JAWC students undertook two Mitzvah projects. The first project was a canned food drive for Jewish Family Services. First they each brought in non-perishable food from home. They counted the classroom tzedakah and took a portion of the money to Kroger, where they each chose two additional non-perishable items. Taking the children to Kroger on Thanksgiving week to buy food for families that need some help is becoming a tradition at JAWC, as this is the second year they have done this. Shopping for basic items to give to people in need reinforces to the children that they have much to be thankful for, and that something as basic food is not to be taken for granted. The kids love doing the self check-out. In the end three boxes of food were given to Jewish Family Services.

For the second Mitzvah project, right before winter break, the students packed and shipped boxes filled with hygiene products, snacks, and candy to deployed servicemen. Their teacher, Erin Scoggins, has a brother serving in Afghanistan who advised her on the items the soldiers need. Some of the students gave names and addresses of people in the military that they know. Our next door neighbor is a Chaplain in Iraq so a package was sent to him. S. and her family had spent Shabbat with a Rabbi and his family at Camp Legune so she felt connected to this mitzvah project, having spent a weekend with military families and soldiers on a base. In addition to needed items, each box contained a class photo, with all of the children dressed in red, white and blue, in front of the American and Israeli flags. Some of the children wrote notes to the soldiers. Even though the packages will arrive well after the holidays, as the holidays were fresh on the kid’s minds, I did see “Happy Hanukkah, I love you” written on one card and heard some discussion between the kids on whether or not it makes sense to write “Merry Christmas” on another. Eleven boxes were sent.

JAWC Hosts Jewish Children’s Book Author Dina Rosenfeld

This is the full version of the article I'm writing for the Raleigh/Cary Jewish Federation's paper. The paper's version will be much shorter.

It was a cold and snowy day, the first day of winter vacation, yet the Jewish Academy of Wake County was warm and full of happy children. Dina Rosenfeld, author of many Jewish Children’s books, was sitting in a little green chair, teaching an enwrapped audience of twenty children and many adults how to write a children’s book.
She used as an example her book “Peanut Butter and Jelly for Shabbos”. It started on a sheet of yellow lined paper that is covered with sentences and paragraphs all written in different directions, generated through brainstorming. One sentence was circled, the idea behind “Peanut Butter and Jelly for Shabbos.” She then showed the editing process, where the story is refined from a handwritten pages with many corrections to a typed pages with corrections to a finished story that is then put into an envelope and sent to the illustrator. Rosenfeld says “In a picture book, if you talk about something you have to show it.” She showed the illustrator’s process from pencil drawings to full color images and the changes they made along the way to clarify the message of the illustrations. She showed the finished book in its hard cardboard binding.
Next she showed two books in their original form that she had illustrated herself, and how professional illustrators and book designers had continued her work. In one example, the illustrator did something completely different than what she had originally drawn. She said that it’s interesting how two people can interpret a story in two completely different ways. She then showed an original layout of a book where she had created collages of colored paper for the illustrations. In that example the illustrator had used her illustrations as the inspiration for his paintings.
Mrs. Rosenfeld also held up the book “A Kind Hearted Rivka”, translated into many languages, and read the title in all of the different languages. She showed them the same book in Braille, and explained how the Jewish Heritage for the Blind prints books in Braille so that blind adults can read stories to the children in their lives.
The final message of the story “Peanut Butter for Shabbos” is “You’ll only succeed if you’re willing to try.” The children at JAWC had made their own books during the last few weeks, each one fully illustrated with a cover and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The childen were very proud to share their books with Dina Rosenfeld who said “Everyone can be an artist and make up stories.”