March 29, 2024 |

What’s in a name: Kitah Aleph and their Hebrew names

Posted on January 21, 2018

At the beginning of the year, I asked Kitah Aleph students about their hopes and dreams, their goals for learning this school year. A number of them said that they wanted to learn to write their names in Hebrew. Today we learned the story of Jacob, who wrestled with an angel, and was given the new name of Israel. We talked a bit about the significance of names and children shared some of their nicknames. Then the children traced and decorated their Hebrew names. This is the first step in their learning to write their own Hebrew names.

In other Kitah Aleph news, the children played a fun game with Bar about a cat and a mouse. This game is popular for younger children when they are in the Israeli Scouts. During tefillah with Cantor Ken, the children began learning some Purim songs as well as working on learning tefillot.

The children learned two new Hebrew letters today, aleph and vav. As always we reviewed all of our Hebrew letters.

We have been discussing the Jewish value of derech eretz, showing kindness and respect for others. We learned about this value a few weeks ago in connection with Dr. Martin Luther King and his friend Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today the children read a booklet about derech eretz and committed to being kind and respectful to some of their friends and family over the next few days. Parents, please do remind them of this commitment.

Shavua Tov, Joanne