December 5, 2024 |

Gan Class Update 1-7-18

Posted on January 8, 2018

Hello Gan Class Families!

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a wonderful winter break and that everyone is staying warm in this extremely cold weather.

Today was our first class of 2018 and we were busily preparing for a very special event which is coming up soon.  The students in the Gan Class will be participating in Kabbalat Torah on February 10th and today we started to learn some new songs with Cantor Ken.  Those songs will be sent to you soon so that students can practice at home.  In the coming weeks, we will continue to work with Cantor Ken as well as make a special project.  

Bar shared with us what it is like to be an Israeli Scout.  He explained the meaning behind the different colored scarves, shared some pictures and stories and then helped us learn a fun new tag-like game that kids might play with the Scouts.  

Our new Torah story was about the Tower of Babel.  At one time, all the people lived in the same place.  They wanted to build a tower that reached the sky.  God did not think this was a good idea so God made it so that the people could not communicate with each other.  They were unable to build the tower and had to move away and learn to talk again.  Next week we will experience how challenging it is to build something with a group when you cannot communicate with each other.

Our new letters today were koof and yud.  Koof makes the sound k- and begins the work keshet, which means rainbow.  Yud makes the sound y- and begins the word yad, which mean hand.  We also know several other words that begin with yud.

In our Celebrations unit, we discussed the different places that Jewish people live.  We used a map to mark off places that we know Jewish people live and realized that Jewish people live on almost every continent, and are all over the world.  We learned that even though you might speak a different language, all Jews celebrate the same holidays, read the same Torah stories and use the same prayers. 

Eliana’s parents were our Mystery Readers today.  This was perfect because Eliana’s dad has lived in many different countries and they have family that still lives in Israel.  He was able to share some interesting facts and answer some of our important questions.  They read us a book called My Cousin Tamar Lives in Israel by Michelle Abraham.  It was a very cute story about a girl who has a cousin that lives in Israel and discussing the differences in the ways that they live their Jewish lives.

Our next class will be on January 21st.  There is no class next week due to the long weekend in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the Gan Class.

Michelle