Roshanim

We have a new class!!!

Roshanim (tadpoles) is a monthly class for children and their parent or grandparent who are between 3-5 years old.  During the class our youngest students will be introduced to Hebrew, Holidays, Bible stories and Jewish values through song, movement, arts and crafts and celebrations.  The class will give them a taste of the wonders and riches our religion offers. Young children love experiencing the joys of the Jewish holidays, hearing the tales of our matriarchs and patriarchs and singing the songs and prayers of our tradition. The early childhood years are a wonderful time to being to, “Teach it to your children” as we are taught in the Shema.  At this age children are sponge-like, ready to soak up Hebrew, Jewish values and holidays all keys in building strong future Jewish identities. 

Let us know if you know a 3-5 year old who would like to join Roshanim.

Chanukah

We celebrated this week in Pardes!

Between Sunday and Tuesday we consumed 22 dozen donuts!

We played dreidel

Invited parents to performances
 

Made yummy menorahs and created cards, with lots of bling thanks to Morah Deb, for our families and seniors living in nursing homes.
 


Light the Menorah


And watched some fun Chanukah videos. Watch them again as a family.

G-dcast Spins Hanukkah

I Light It 

Miracles 

One Day

 

Dreidel

Sesame Street: Hanukkah With Veronica Monica 

Shalom Sesame

• Hebrew month of Kislev
• Baby Bear Plays Dreidel

And who knew the Maccabeats were so popular in St Louis. As soon as we turned them on, the whole room was cheering and singing along. I guess we all flip our latkes in the air sometimes. I hope your family had a wonderful Chanukah this year!

Candlelight

Shabbaton

Last Shabbat I spent 25 hours at B’nai Amoona celebrating Shabbat with 31 amazing
4th and 5th graders. Students from B’nai Amoona, Shaare Zedek and BSKI joined together for our annual community Conservative Shabbaton. We sang, prayed, ate, played and laughed together. This was a great group of kids.

One of the most exciting things about a Shabbaton is the blending of formal and informal education. Students are able to experience the beauties of Shabbat, the T’fillot, the community, and even no cell phone, computers or i-pods for a full 25 hours. They are able to make meaningful and fun what they learn about in the classroom. Additionally, each Shabbaton we choose a theme that compliments their classroom curriculum. This year our theme was Bereshit, the book of Genesis.

This may not sounds so exciting at first but we challenged the students to make it though all 12 parshiot (sections) in the time we had together. We had relays to build the tower of Babel and help Rebecca water Elizar’s camels, we created Abraham and Sarah’s family tree and were guests in their tent, we performed raps and cheers about the Garden of Eden and Noah’s ark and we laughed at the Madrichim (counselors) skit when Jacob wrestled the angel.

Throughout the Shabbaton we worked on creating a timeline of the stories in Bereshit. And by the time the parents joined us on Saturday evening for Havdalah we all cheered as we put the last parsha in place, completing our timeline and reviewed the entire book of Genesis. If you missed this Shabbaton then you missed out on a special weekend.

Tweet your Prayers

Our seventh grade Hebrew/Tfillot class was given the challenge of creating a Tweet, a 140 character message, of a communal prayer one could say during Minchah, the afternoon service. Here are some of our student’s Tweets:

Praised are you, Adonai our God, king and ruler of the universe, Todah Rabah, for my life, my soul: my family, my friends.

Blessed is Hashem, who is merciful in the court of justice. Blessed is Hashem who bestows his wisdom upon his subjects. Whose domain is over all nations.

Accept this religion I have given you and don’t turn down on it. Help the people I have made & give charity & respect them as if it was you.

Thank you Adonai for giving me love in this cool world.

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, Todah Rabah Hashem, Todah Rabah Hashem, Atah Metzuyan. (Blessed are you God, King of the universe, thank you God, thank you God, you are excellent.)

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam to God for being there for me throughout my whole life & supporting me & my family. We praise you so please don’t stop on me now.

The Lord is our Melech. Thx for blessings as the Israelites. God is awesome. The Lord is the creator of the world. God is glorious and royal.

God places changes in our life. Some are good, but some we don’t like or we aren’t ready for. But change can be good. Change helps you grow.

We praise you our Lord. You sprinkle us with kindness. You are all forgiving. You are the Lord our God.

God, I love you very much, because you are the almighty awesomeness of the world.

God is a shield and a guiding hand and he is awesome.

God bless you who is the greatest who is the universe who is the only.

OMG! God is the BEST, he did cool stuff. I luv u God.

Kristallnacht Commemoration

Kitah Dalet (4th) and Hey (5th) walked into a classroom yesterday staged to look like a Jewish owned store on November 10, 1938 in Nazi Germany. The class then engaged in a discussion of how to speak up when you see and hear discrimination or intolerance of any people in order to commemorate Kristallnacht.

This past Tuesday, Andy and I stared at each other with shocked looks on our faces. We had spent the past 10 minutes telling students they could not go back to class and actually barring the doors that enter the school. Students arrive to Pardes so excited to get into their classrooms and see their teachers that they are running down the hallways way before class begins. We try to keep our students in the lobby until 5 minutes before class in order to give our teachers time to set up their classrooms and prepare for the day, but our students are so excited about their class, they just can’t wait! What a wonderful problem, students eager to get to their classrooms each day (now, if only we can transfer that excitement to early Sunday mornings :) )

It has been an exciting first three weeks of school for me. Students are happy, parents are happy, teachers are happy and all this happiness is centered around the creation of excellent Jewish education and strong community! Our numbers are up from last year. This year we have students enrolled in 13 grades (K-12th) and I am still getting phone calls asking about joining our program. The number of students in our program is exciting because it means that we are touching many students and their families lives but the real excitement for me is walking into our classrooms and watching the dynamic learning happening. In every classroom I walk into, and I try to speak a few minutes in each classroom every day, I see students engaged in the learning process whether it is our 2nd graders playing a flashcard matching game or 6th graders studying a piece of Talmud about how we should treat our friends and those we don’t like, or 8th graders discussing the meaning of their B’nai Mitzvah projects as a basis for their study on Mitzvah Heroes, or 10th graders watching “The Lunch Date” as a trigger for a discussion on assumptions we make when we first meet people who are different then us. The bottom line is there is really exciting learning happening in every direction. If this is the first three weeks, I can’t wait to see the rest of the year.

Have you heard? We have created a new window into our classrooms. Four Pardes teachers are currently blogging each week about what is happening in our classrooms and around Pardes. Anyone can visit the blog, www.pardestreehouse.blogspot.com. Come take a peak. See the exciting education happening in our classrooms. The goal is for each of the five of us to post a picture and blog entry one a week, so check back often. Those teachers who are currently blogging are:

Jennifer, our Director of Congregational Learning

Deborah Weinstein, Kitah Bet (2^nd grade)

Claire Hack, Kitah Dalet and Hey Judaics (4^th & 5^th Judaics)

Andrew Schwebel, Confirmation Class (10^th grade)

Jan Baron, Kitah Chet (8^th grade)

Check out the links on the left, make a comment and enjoy the view into education at Pardes!