Freedom School 5/11 Class Recaps

K/1 w/ Laura: Last week we continued our unit about Jewish Values using the framework of the Sefirot to explore the values of Balance, Victory, and Surrender. Many Jewish families meditate on one of the Sefirot during each week of the Omer counting. As an entry point into balance, we explored the famous poem from Kohelet that "to everything there is a season" and shared our own experiences of the different seasons of our lives (dancing/mourning, embracing/not embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose). We then talked about the balance between victory and surrender and practiced how to win and lose with integrity by doing an obstacle course. In our last session we will complete our unit of values! We hope to see you there to close out the year strong. 

2/3 w/ Anyssa: This week our class explored the connection between the story of Hannah (mother of the Prophet Samuel) and our own mothers - this also happened to coincide with Mother’s Day so it was a great and timely theme! In our first block, we read Hannah’s story and talked about her desire and determination to have a child, and how she gave her only son, Samuel, back to service to God after her prayer was answered. In the second block, we made some wonderful collages inspired our own mothers. In the last block, we decorated terracotta pots and planted wildflower seeds - to tie back to Hannah’s desire for a baby (and new life). Hope all the moms had a great weekend and enjoyed their collages!

4/5 w/ Doria: 4/5 spent the morning starting the process of weaving together the threads of all our learning this year. A highlight was remembering stories of Jewish leadership (manhigut), exploring history and memory (zikaron) and doing some expert-level blessing review in our rousing game of Jew-pardy! 

6th w/ Jaime: During our May 11th Shabbat session, the sixth grade class started a recap of the year. We mapped the connections between Torah, storytelling, and the different creative explorations of various topics. Students also revisited the Torah texts we studied together this year and dropped into services to catch the Bar Mitzvah Torah service.