The First Day in the Haifa Classroom!!

Today may have been the first day of school, but the Haifa students cruised through class like they were pros! We spent our morning going through some things we will do everyday, such as the schedule and the all important stick person. We then spent our morning just like every other morning, exploring and having fun! The Haifa kids were all over the room, from making playdoh, to pretending to take naps because school was so exhausting, to ending our day with a great book, My First Day at Nursery School. Sauci and I had such a great day this morning and we can't wait for tomorrow!

-Alison and Sauci

Making Our New Classroom Our Own

On Friday the Haifa class did a small project that will hopefully help the transition to our new school year. None of the students have been in the Haifa class before, so we wanted to help the students feel a little bit of ownership of their space, starting on the first day. Instead of making cubby tags for the students, Sauci and I thought it would be great for the students to make their own tags. We used stickers and markers, and each student in the Haifa class helped put their cubby tags in their cubby with a teacher. Now all of their things will be stored in cubbies that they created themselves! In the above photo, Lizzie is telling her mom what is on her cubby tag-her brothers at different ages!

-Alison and Sauci

First Day of School

It was a successful first day as children greeted each other, got to know new spaces, new routines, and new people, and spent time exploring. Click to take a peek at our photos from day 1.

We Wish for You...

Our Goals for Our Children

How Do I Pronounce the Names of the Classes?

Thank you to Michele, Rabbi Todd, Mia, and Adam Markley for creating this pronunciation guide.

Parenting Through A Jewish Lens: Teacher Edition!

Over the past two weeks the Children’s Center team has been hard at work getting the classrooms ready and spending time together in teams to prepare for the start of the school year. In addition to beautifying our physical spaces, we have taken a bit of time to do some learning ourselves. This year our staff has the incredible opportunity to study with Ronit Ziv-Kreger, a warm and knowledgeable instructor from Hebrew College, and participate in a pilot teacher version of the course, “Parenting through a Jewish Lens.” I was curious about what it meant to take a parenting course, and how that would relate to my life as a teacher. So far, I have found the experience to be incredibly enriching and I am curious to learn more as we continue the course throughout the year. 

What I find fascinating about the course is that Ronit gives us tools to enrich our classroom that are grounded in traditional Jewish texts. The first day we discussed new beginnings and we took a close look at the prayer, Modeh Ani. Since this discussion I have added a morning ritual into my own life of doing stretches when I wake up to the tune of this song, we will see if teachers decide to incorporate something similar into their classrooms! We also talked about  the end of the day and evening prayers and how those themes can translate into some of the literary for going to bed.  By looking at the text we are ale to find meaning in words that our thousands of years old that still bring meaning to our lives both in and out of the classroom.

On the second day we discussed the power of words in our text to critically analyze how teachers and students use words in the classroom. We broke up into three groups, lashron hara (gossip), critical feedback/reprove, and praise. We read many texts that linked the ancient ways to our modern society and Ronit helped us apply these to our everyday lives. I am inspired to continue learning throughout this year and I hope that others, both teachers and parents,  will continue to be inspired by this course throughout the year.