Freedom School 8/24

Zoe - K-1 - We started the day with short introductions, then chose up to 3 journal prompts to do with parents, then visited the pop up museum, and then did a get to know you game involving animals and birthdays. The kids all loved finding out each other's birthdays and all were born between November-February (including me!). They really liked learning that the Jewish calendar revolves around the moon, and we learned a lot more about Elul. Why was it different from the months we are born in. We ended with a drawing exercise of the Shofar and the kids enjoyed it.

Samantha - 2-3 - To kick off the new school year, I wanted to make sure our activities fostered new connections and a better sense of community. We started off by playing a few different name games to get the kids involved as well as allow them to get to know each other's names in a non embarrassing environment. The kids were then broken up into pairs to "interview" each other and create a portrait of their partner. For the rest of the day we followed the given schedule of recess/outside time and working through the Elul journals. 

Rachel - 4-5 -  4th/5th grade met each other, practiced names with their peers and family members. They learned the song “We Are From The Garden,” and discussed where each of them are from. They connected about the tangible places they are from, and then dove deeper into the intangible places they are from, connecting back to the song they learned. They wrapped up their activity by creating a yarn web that they then cut up and kept pieces of as bracelets to remind them of the micro community we created in class.

Jaime - 6 -  On our first day of Freedom School, the sixth grade class worked to answer the question of “why are you here?” We also started our exploration of the month of Elul and the Jewish calendar (a bonus at-home activity is to look up their Jewish calendar birthdays at https://www.hebcal.com/converter). Towards the end of our morning together, we joined the community in Torah services to celebrate Mia’s bat mitzvah and learn.