Shalom Kitah Gimel Students and Families #17

Shalom Kitah Gimel students and families.
In Wednesday Hebrew class, we began with the Blessings for Torah Study and cookies.
As part of our attendance conversation, we sang Yom Huledet Sameach (Happy Birthday) to two students who had recently celebrated their birthdays.

Modern Spoken Hebrew
As review, we re-read aloud the story Yom Sheleg (Snow Day). Students illustrated events from the story and described their illustrations in Hebrew. A popular drawing was Achbar ochel uga (A mouse is eating cake.) There are very artistic and imaginative students in our class!

To review the story, Ba Kitah ("In Class") which we've been studying in Chapter 5 of our modern Hebrew texts, students participated in an activity called "Cut-Ups." Each student received a slip of paper with two lines cut from the story. Using their lines, students answered Hebrew questions posed in a variety of formats. They also matched their Hebrew lines to English translations.

Students read aloud a new story, Doron Ba Kitah ("Doron is in Class"). This story introduces the names of common classroom items, as well as several possessive word forms ( "You have," "I don't have")
Students made vocabulary cards for the nine new words. As we add more vocabulary and word forms, it is vital to students' progress that they review their vocabulary cards at home. Please encourage your students' efforts to study their modern Hebrew vocabulary during the week.

Torah Study
We moved from Doron in the classroom to the children of Israel in the wilderness, where they anxiously awaited Moses' return from Mount Sinai. We recounted major events in previous Torah Portions as background for this week's Portion, Ki Tissa. Students read an information packet on Ki Tissa and focused on the Israelites' creation of a Golden Calf as an object of idol worship. Students pointed out that the Israelites were scared by Moses' lengthy absence and that their faith in God had weakened. Students expressed surprise that Aaron, Moses' brother and God's choice for High Priest, would have participated in the making of the Golden Calf. We discussed Moses' efforts to persuade God not to destroy the Israelites and Moses' angry reaction to the misguided behavior of the Israelites. Moses smashed the stone tablets containing God's Laws!
As a visual representation of Ki Tissa, I showed the class a large "Golden Calf" made out of gold posterboard. (Thank you to my daughter for drawing the calf image.) Students shared ideas about what the Golden Calf might be thinking -"Oh, No! I'm going to be destroyed!" - and that's exactly what Moses did!

As students left class for T'fila, they each described something they'd learned in class.

In T'fila, the Cantor presented additional Torah Trope symbols and led students in a lively practice session. Students discovered that the first line of the V'Ahavta Prayer contains many of the Trope symbols they'd learned.

L'hitraot - See you soon,
Morah Ronni