Freedom School 3/30 Class Recaps
K-7 and Parents: This weekend, we continued our year-long work on Building our Spiritual Core. We reviewed the concepts of Keva (structure, order) and Kavannah (intention, meaning) that are balanced throughout prayer - by exploring optical illusions and the different ways different people see different things in the same black-and-white images. Then, in family units, we did a scavenger hunt through The Kitchen’s siddur (prayerbook) to find as many blessings as possible, while looking for patterns and similarities. We closed by deciding which blessings are the most important for the community and which are the most important to us, and then channeled our kavannah to make blessing cards.
K/1 w/ Laura: We finished our unit on our forefathers and foremothers this week by telling the story of Rachel and Leah. We learned about the trick that Lavan played on Jacob and how Jacob's obvious preference for Rachel and her son Joseph became the catalyst for our enslavement in Egypt. (This sets us up nicely to transition into our Passover learnings over the coming sessions.) We celebrated completing our unit with lollipops, trivia, and a giant illustrated family tree of our forefathers and foremothers. God promised Abraham that his children would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. We are those children. We celebrated the fulfillment of God's promise with self portraits that we added to the family tree. Thank you for letting me learn with your children! We look forward to our mini-unit on Passover coming up next.
2/3 w/ Anyssa: Today the 2nd/3rd grade class read the story of Moses and the Golden Calf. We discussed the feelings that God and Moses felt when they saw the Israelites worshipping a false idol - the golden calf. We played a charades game which helped us dive deeper into those negative feelings of anger, shame, jealousy, etc. in the first block. In the second block, we discussed compassion and what it means to “put yourself in another person’s shoes” and how we can show more kindness to others. To sum it all up, we created compassion paintings, painted with compassion!
4/5 w/ Doria: 4/5 joined in building our spiritual cores in the first part of the morning. We then moved on in Exodus to learn about Moses receiving the 10 commandments on My. Sinai. Students read the midrash that explicates how we all were at Sinai, even if our bodies weren't there, our souls are connected to that moment. Based on this midrash, students drew self-portraits of themselves at Mt. Sinai as we engaged in conversation surrounding the commandments. Parents, ask your students how many they remember!
6th w/ Jaime: Last Saturday, the 6th grade class spent the latter part of the morning learning more about the ritual of bar / bat / b’nei mitzvah both through inquiry and attending Wyatt’s bar mitzvah. We then sat down to start thinking about what community means - to us and our family - which we’ll keep exploring in the coming weeks.