Posted on September 26, 2016
Today was a wonderful second day of class. We were thrilled to have Bina, our Madricha join us for the first time. Bina will be with our class everyday and will be leading some of our activities as well as helping students to make sure everyone has a wonderful class each Sunday morning. We are so lucky to have Bina as part of the Gan Class.
Our day started with Tefilah. Some weeks we will have Tefilah with the whole school and other weeks we will be with the Aleph (Grade 1) and Bet (Grade 2) classes only. Today, in the smaller setting, we were able to sing some of our favorite songs with Cantor Ken and learn about how to use the siddur. Cantor Ken shared with us that the siddur opens backwards from what we are used to with our English books. This made it much easier for the students to follow along with the pages.
In the classroom, we enjoyed our first Torah story together. We discovered how God made the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Students learned about the different things that God made each day and had fun guessing which things would be made next. We will revisit this story again when we are back together in October.
The new letter today was tet. Tet makes the sound t- and begins the word talit. Each student had the opportunity to try on a talit today. Students shared that wearing a talit made them feel special, warm and close to G-d.
In our Celebrations learning, we continued to get exposure to the High Holidays. Today’s focus was Yom Kippur. We practiced doing an al het and learned that this is a time to ask for forgiveness for things that “missed the mark.” To help us think about ways we could ask for forgiveness, we read The Hardest Word by Jacqueline Jules. Students then had the opportunity to illustrate and share something that they are sorry for.
The Gan Class will next meet on Sunday, October 16th. I wish you all a Shana Tova and can’t wait to start 5777 with you!
Michelle Nelson
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