Ani Maamin's - 13 principles of faith illustrated

The first 5 of the 13 principles of faith in graphic icon form . . . to help make them memorable for students who are used to learning visually.

#1 - G-d exists 

#2 - He is One

 #3 - He has no body 

#4 He is eternal 

#5 All prayers go to Him and not to an intermediary.

May 10 recap

Tefillah: We discussed how ה' is טוב לכל - to all and is good to ALL of his creations. We talked about not hurting animals unnecessarily  I even mentioned how Rav Yaakov Yosef Herman would even feed cats in Yerushalayim because he was טוב to all of Hashem's creations.

Chumash - We reviewed a bit and did one more pasuk. The students were a little hyper because they had COLOR WAR.

(My kids were on different teams. When they got off the bus today, my first grader had on this huge grin. I had assumed that he had won. No, he lost - he just had a great two days and felt really successful the whole time. )

May 9 recap

It's COLOR WAR. Yellow & Blue. We still had davening and chumash for half a period. The kids lined up their desks into two lines facing each other.

Tefillah: We were up to a great pasuk of Ashrei to give a pep talk for color war.

חנון ורחום ה' ארך אפים וגדל חסדו. - I talked about how we are supposed to imitate Hashem. The better we act, the bigger we are.
חנון - be a gracious winner or loser -
רחום - help out the weaker kids/kindergarten kids who seem overwhelmed
ארך אפים - if someone annoys or upsets us, we should say over 8 times ארך אפים - I am slow to anger
גדל חסדו - Think big when helping out others - what could they use or need.

The pep talk combined with the stellar middos of my class shone through. During the first game, the yellow team was losing. The 3rd graders on the blue team decided to alternate cheering for the blue and yellow team to be gracious winners!

Chumash - We reviewed some of the pesukim and learned one new pasuk. We acted out the words to make it memorable.

May 8 recap

Tefillah:
 הדר כבוד הודך, ודברי נפלאתיך אשיחה. ועזוז נוראתיך יאמרו, וגדלתך אספרנה.  זכר רב טובך יביעו, וצדקתך  ירננו...
Meaning:
The splendorous glory of Your power and Your wondrous deeds I shall discuss.
And of Your awesome power they  will speak, and Your greatness I shall relate.
A recollection of Your abundant goodness they will utter and of Your righteousness
they will sing exultantly....

Each of these three lines of Ashrei mentions different ways to communicate out loud. Focus: Why is it so important to vocalize these ideas?
Activity: What are some things that are important to say? Why do you need to say them? What will happen to our opinion if we talk about something positively? Negatively? Relate it back to the main questions

Chumash: Review - the last few pesukim have been very difficult. Review the hard words - specifically names of animals and other words that will appear again.

Each student has a whiteboard and a dry erase marker. I took off the flash cards from the felt hangings and shuffled the cards, and reviewed them one by one orally. I shuffled them again, this time when I held them up, the students had to write the answers on their whiteboards.

 The students get very motivated even though it's drill work. They learn vocabulary words  and I can eyeball who needs help and who doesn't immediately.
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I then asked the kids to go through the next pasuk and write down words they don't know.
The next few pesukim are not easier

לודֶּרֶךְ שְׁלֹשֶׁת  בֵּינוֹ הַנּוֹתָרֹת.	36  three days' journey  betwixt himself  the rest
לז מַקַּל לִבְנֶה לַח לוּז עַרְמוֹן פַצֵּל לְבָנוֹת מַחְשֹׂף

I referenced the above picture when teaching this pasuk which helped a lot.

 After recess and library, the students had time to practice and perform their plays about rabbi shimon bar yochai. They got very into making these plays. I have a whole stash of fabric stored in the classroom for these occasions, so they draped themselves to be Romans and Jews. They borrowed various hats from the kindergarten. They each performed their scenes wonderfully and we then spoke about Lag B'Omer

May 7 recap

Tefillah: Continue with ashrei Dor l Dor. Asked students to think of one thing they learned from a grandparent. Some of the  answers were candy making, baseball. Who taught their grandparents baseball - they said their parents. I asked when baseball was invented - that was a debate was it in the 1800s or during the civil war. I mentioned how we have something that goes back generation to generation, further back than baseball or making candy - The Torah & believing in Hashem. The Torah goes back to Moshe. But believing in Hashem goes back to Avraham. When we say דור לדור it reminds us that we have gotten something that has been passed down for thousands of years

Chumash - This part of the Chumash is very confusing. I gave out a handout to help the students visualize what we were learning.

As we read the pesukim, we illustrated the sheet.

Ivrit/Limudei Kodesh. - I distributed a hebrew story about Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. I translated all the difficult words on the page and gave out guided questions I split the class into three groups. The first read the text as a group and answered the questions in hebrew, the second read half the story and answered the questions in english. The third group read the story and answered the questions with the help of the teacehr. After reading and answering the questions, each group decided on how they would present soemthing to the class. One group is making a poster and two are making skits.

RT: לב-לה
R: לו-מ
Worksheet

May 4 recap

Tefillah: We had the second graders join us because of some substitute timing. We reviewed that Ashrei = Happy and what makes us happy. We then translated the first few lines of Ashrei until בכל יום. I asked the students if they needed to thank their mothers today if they already did so yesterday? Why would we need to bless and appreciate Hashem every day? Should our feelings of thanks to our mother be the same each and every day? 

Before we said Ashrei, we thought of something we are happy for. We paused before בכל יום to think of what we would thank Hashem for today!

Chumash. We spent today learning the vocabulary for the next unit

כשב = sheep

עז=female goat תיש= male goat

צאן = many goats OR sheep

שה = one goat OR sheep

טלוא = spotted (patched)

נקוד - dotted

עקוד - ringed

What יעקב initially asked for (there is a mistake - the brown sheep should be with לבן's sheep.)

יעקב would mate white goats, black goats, ringed goats, brown goats, checked goats

לבן would mate spotted & dotted goats and brown sheep

יעקב's salary would be dotted & spotted goats & brown sheep

I explained basic genetics by surveying who in the class has blue eyes and who else in their family has blue eyes.

What לבן took

dotted, spotted, ringed, any goats with white (some say any sheep that are white) and brown sheep.

Leaving Yaakov with Black goats, black sheet and according to some white sheep. His salary stays the same.

יעקב's plan

He takes three לח=fresh sticks-מקלות of לבנה, לוז, ערמון and stood (ויצג) them in the gutters (רהטים) of the water troughs (שקתות מים) The goats would get excited (hot ויחמו) when looking at the sticks and have dotted & spotted babies. He did this with the קשורים - the strong ones, for the weak ones - the עטופים - he didn't use this trick so lavan got sick sheep and יעקב got a lot of good sheep.

I also gave out Pirkei Avos Perek 3 to learn over Shabbos.

May 3 recap

Intro: We are starting אשרי!

We discussed אשרי means happy. What do we need to do to be happy? We need to focus on good things to appreciate them to be happy. In אשרי, we will focus on many things ה' does which is why we are happy.


Chumash:  Review Pesukim 25-27.
Translation sheets

Learn pesukim 28-31

Draw shorashim on board
2) Ask questions:

•     if יעקב thinks it is time to leave, what should the conversation go like?
•    When do you think יעקב will want to go and why?
•     Will לבן want him stay? How will he convince יעקב to stay.

3) Read פסוקים inside the חומש

• call on students to read phrases
• read as a class
• kids ask questions based on the fact that the pesukim differ from what they expected. 
• read rashis
• read pesukim as a class

4) Fill in translations - the students paired themselves up. I sat in the back of the room. Some students like the security of working with me. Others prefer to work with friends.

•  Level 1 - with teacher/ friend
• Level 2 - with friend, and fill in שרשיםת גוף & זמן

Ivrit:  Follow up on conversation. Have peple invit e each other to do something

Gedolim: Rav Tuvia Goldstein. His Yartzheit is Sunday, 14 Iyar. I didn't have much material - but one of my students was named after him. There is a cool story about how he managed to survive Siberia because his camp guard thought he had connections in Moscow. This was an opportunity to talk about Stalin and what a Rasha he was to his own people.

Parsha : Two Parshios - - Using the sheets from chinuch.org (word find, balsam) I acted out the steps of the עבודה. For Kedoshim, we went through the Mitzvos to see how many the students would recognize.

Homework: RT:  כח-לא R: לב-ו
Homework sheet with translating phrases and מי אמר למי

May 2 recap

Today was a great day.

The class did this awesome unit about the Civil War where each kid took one historical figure, researched his life and role in the Civil War, wrote journal entries from that perspective and then dressed in costume to present  in a "town hall meeting"

We went on a field trip today to Genessee Country Village & Museum - a living history museum where they recreate life from the 18th and 19th century. As a parent and co-teacher I came along. It was an awesome place.

There was a pioneer homestead where they got to grind corn, carry a yoke, wash dishes and churn butter. They got to watch a potter churn butter.

We tied the trip slightly into limudei kodesh. When the kids picked up the yoke, they said without prompting "I'm pretending to be Esav and I will break the yoke!"  We also discussed how pottery connected to last weeks parsha of metzora.

Trip was not as comprehensive as this one but was cool nonetheless

Tefillah topics: Great online resource

http://www.prayingwithfire.org/archives.html