March 28, 2024 |

Gan Class Update 9-20-15

Posted on September 21, 2015

Hello Gan Class Families!

Our first day of class was FANTASTIC!  It was so great to get to know each of your students and I am so excited about all the great learning we will get to do together this year.
Below is a detailed update about our day. You can look forward to receiving this information on Sunday or Monday of each week that there is class. 
Our day started with some delicious Apple Cinnamon Cheerios for breakfast.  Students had wonderful ideas about why we were enjoying this particular cereal  and many were able to make the connection to Rosh Hashanah and a sweet new year. After breakfast we joined the entire school in the Sanctuary for Tefilah.  We will have Tefilah weekly.  It will be a time to experience the prayers and songs particular to the time of year as well as some of the prayers we say throughout the year such as Modeh Ani and the Shema.
Before beginning our learning together we worked as a community of learners to come up with some guidelines for our class.  We decided on three important things; Be Kind, Be Safe and Make Good Choices.  These ideas will guide us throughout the year in how we interact with each other and how we learn together.   
Back in the classroom our topics were focused on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  In your students’ folders is a pamphlet about each of the Celebrations topics that we discussed today.  They will provide you with the same information that was presented in class.  There are activities in each pamphlet that your student can enjoy at home but it is not assigned homework. In some of our activities we discovered that everyone had apples and honey, ate a round challah and heared a shofar on Rosh Hashanah.  We also made a list of some of the things that Gan Class students are sorry for.  A picture of our ideas is below.​​
Inline image 1
We were lucky enough to get to learn two letters today.  The first was shin.  Shin makes the shound sh-.  A word that students know that begins with the letter shin is shofar.  The second letter was tet.  Tet makes the sound t- and begins the word tallit.  To better understand what a tallit is, each student was offered the opportunity to put one on!  Students remarked that wearing a tallit felt cozy, snuggly, soft, smooth and warm.  A visit from Rabbi Liben helped us learn that you can have more than one tallit, in fact Rabbi Liben says he has several, some that he only wears once a year!
In the next few weeks we will be focusing our learning on Sukkot and Simchat Torah.  Students can look forward to learning two new letters that connect to those holidays.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the Gan Class.
I wish all those who are fasting an easy fast on Tuesday/Wednesday.
See you all next week!
Michelle