Freedom School 9/14
K-1
Samantha - 2-3
This past weekend, after reacquainting ourselves with one another and welcoming new students, we set our brit to follow this school year. We “interviewed” each other to find out more about our interests and picked an animal that we thought our partner would be represented by. We then let out some of our energy during recess and I decided to pivot our next activity to be outside as well. We discussed what Rosh Hashanah means to us all and related our learnings to abstract art. We translated this into our next activity by creating different pieces of art that represented our past year, goals for the next as well as what Rosh Hashanah means to us (i.e. the sound of the shofar, “sweet new year”). The kids enjoyed time in services before wrapping up and reevaluating our brit and amending.
Rachel - 4-5
As we welcomed new students to the class, we set a Brit, or code of conduct for us to follow throughout the year. We let out some goofy energy with a “Would You Rather?” game. We focused the majority of our class time on Rosh Hashanah, specifically learning about the shofar and its importance to Jews. The students learned that the shofar serves as a spiritual wake-up call, encouraging self-reflection and repentance. Because we didn’t have ram horns, we created our own shofarot out of paper plates and tape. We concluded with practicing the sounds we make with the shofar during the High Holy Days, and decorating our shofarot using our interpretation of the sounds. We took inspiration from this gallery in Tzfat, where the artist makes art from the sounds of the shofar.
Jaime - 6 - At Freedom School this weekend, the sixth grade class came up with our classroom mitzvot (commandments or good deeds). We also learned from the bat mitzvah - Evie - about mitzvot in Torah and how they help us build community. The end of our day was spent enjoying the sunshine and talking about the different cycles of time we live by: the seasons, birthdays, school year, Jewish holidays, and new years.