JCC Havurah

Hello Wonderful Havurah First Grade Aleph Families! We began our class with some creative costume and superhero scene design before washing our hands and gearing up for a very special cooking class with Hillary. Hillary read us a story of Chanukah and a magic dreidel, or Sevivon, that never seemed to stop spinning. After story time, we each made our very own edible Chanukah menorah using bananas, pretzels, fruit, marshmallows and chocolate. The students absolutely loved this activity and many said it was the "best day of their lives!". Check out the pictures to see what an awesome job our young superheroes did constructing their menorahs.   After returning to class, we said the brachot, or blessings, for the challah, Shabbat candles, and grape juice together and calmed our bodies with our Shabbat Reflection Circle.  We then completed our theme of David and Goliath by turning our focus inwards to reflect on our own super hero qualities. Our students said that ...

Hello Havurah First Grade Awesome Wonderful Families,  In keeping with our focus on superhero symbols both from Torah stories and our own lives, we began the day with a short model magic symbol experimentation. The students made fascinating textural discoveries by twisting and blending to create new forms and color.   We then carefully washed our hands to ready ourselves for some real-life super hero action! Off to Cooking with Hillary, where we learned about Tzedakah ("charity"),  Mitzvot ("good deeds"), and how we can give back to those who are less fortunate than we.  This connects to the upcoming holiday of Chanukkah, which is not just about getting but also about giving.  So, in our superhero uniforms of hairnets and gloves, our eager helpers worked under Hillary’s supervision to make cream-cheese sandwiches that Chef Hillary brought to a local shelter. It was wonderful to see how excited our Young Superheroes were to lend a helping hand and give ...

Hello Havurah first grade families!  We had a simply SMASHING week! To come together, we started with drawing. We were so happy to see some of the kids keeping with our themes of symbols and superheroes. Molly was focused on perfecting her batman symbol while Sofia told me all about how the sun represents light and happiness. Charlie drew the most wonderful superman cape, as if he knew our class activity ahead of time.  We then made shabbat and went right into creating our own capes to transform us into heroes. The capes used diluted dye and eye droppers to create a tye-die effect. It was fascinating to see how each cape came out so differently.  -Oliver dyed his entire cape blue (a truly minimalist mastermind) -Jacob took an interesting approach of rapidly standing up and sitting down during his masterpiece (a future Picasso?) - Becca was incredibly focused, making a precise polka dot effect -Sofia tried absolutely every technique on her cape...