Challenge Accepted!

Hi Parents!

First off, buried somewhere in this email is a secret word that relates to what the students have been learning class. If your student comes back to class with the correct word, they will earn an extra sticker for their chart!

Secondly, what have we been up to? Today we finished our study of the Kiddush with a “Challenge.” Students were given the option of reading the Kiddush aloud by themselves in front of the class, or privately with me. We have dedicated a lot of time to studying this blessing. We are going to continue to work on the chanting as we move on to other blessings and prayers.  

Next week, we will begin our study of the different brachot, blessings. (The secret word this week is grape juice). We will discuss the importance of patterns in blessings and study what words are common to all blessings. We will work hard on mastering a translation of these introductory words as a means to have a basis of understanding of blessings as a whole.  

This week for homework, students have been assigned two pages (42 and 43) in their books to practice reading. If page 42 is too easy, page 43 should offer some additional challenges. Also, if students did not complete their in class writing work, they are also expected to do that at home.

As usual, please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions!

Thanks,

Stacy

Kiddush... Kiddush... Kiddush

The Kachol class has been hard at work this week perfecting the Kiddush for Friday evening.

We worked in teams in class this week, helping each other to learn to read the blessing. We moved on afterwards to learning the tune for chanting. The students who were confident in the melody worked to teach the other students how to chant.

Some students already have a strong understanding of the prayer and how to chant it. This led us to a conversation about the importance of learning to both read AND chant the blessings.

I want to stress how important it is for students to keep up their reading at home. They should be practicing everyday so they can be prepared for class! The more the practice at home now, the easier it will be later!
Next week we are going to have a "Hebrew Challenge!" to see how well the students have grasped the blessing so far. Students will be asked to read the blessing from start to finish on their own.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns that you might have!

Hebrew Root Charades And More

Hello Everyone!


Well, after our MOSTY Shabbat Mishpacha, we have finally returned to regular Hebrew. Although I'm sure the kids are enjoying it, I'm sorry to say that we had another snow day!

The students of the kachol Hebrew class have been hard at work learning roots. We played another round of Hebrew root charades (our favorite class game). In this game, one student is given a 3 letter root -- for example, bet, resh, chaf, and must act out what it means. The letters are written up on the board, and the rest of the class must name all three letters, and then define the root. Students are given "bonus points" if they can name any words they ALREADY know that have the root in them.

This week we focused on roots you might find in the Kiddush for Friday evening. We have just started learning this blessing, and students are picking it up fairly quickly. Their homework this week was to practice reading the first 10 lines of this blessing in their books, and I hope they will keep it up even though we did not have class this week!

We will spend the next 2 weeks taking a look at this blessing before moving on to our next Friday evening prayer.

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Thanks,

Stacy