Exploring Jerusalem
Hello, today we started the day by making a choice to visit one of three synagogues (the Great synagogue, the Italian synagogue, or ShiraHadasha). Soon after we had lunch we went to a park in Jerusalem, where we ran, played and celebrated a birthday with some yummy snacks. We ended the night by heading to Ben Yehuda street and spending time with family and friends. Overall we had a relaxed first Shabbat. -Anna On Sunday, we started the day with praying right next to our hotel in Jerusalem. We then traveled to Yad Vashem, the National Holocaust Museum. There, we... Read More
Shabbos #1
Today, the 8th Grade had an early wake up from their Bedouin tent and started off their day with a hike up Masada to watch a spectacular sunrise. Following that, we took a cable car back down to an amazing breakfast at a hotel along the Dead Sea. Then we drove to a beach on the Dead Sea and went swimming. We all had such a fun time floating and rubbing mud on ourselves. Afterwards we drove to Jerusalem and checked into our hotel and got ready for Shabbos. We went to the Kotel and got sturdy with some chassids... Read More
Thursday in Israel
We started off our day davening right at the edge of the Makhtesh. Despite the beautiful view, it was incredibly cold and windy, and we had to move before the Torah reading. The night before, we packed up all our things to get ready to sleep in a Bedouin tent. We locked our suitcases in the bottom of our bus and drove off to an alpaca farm. At the farm, we got to see alpacas, llamas, goats, dogs, and horses, and also learned the difference between a llama and an alpaca. We even got spat at by some. We drove... Read More
Our Time in the Negev
After a (mostly) restful night’s sleep in Mitzpeh Ramon Youth Hostel, we woke up early to drive to Midreshet Ben Gurion, overlooking the canyons and ravines of the Negev. We davened under the olive trees of Ben Gurion’s garden and then visited his gravesite next to his wife Paula. Afterward we went on a hike through Ein Avdat National Park and saw water fall through the valleys. We had falafel and ice cream in the nearby town before we feasted on cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, kumquats, and strawberries at Shvil Hasalat (the salad trail) on a moshav in the western Negev.... Read More
Arrival in Israel!!
Hello Senesh and Senesh Families! Welcome to our first blog post of Hannah Senesh’s 8th grade 2023 Israel trip! It was a long two days of travel, and a hard day of being archeologists! Everyone was a good sport on little sleep. While we were archeologists at the ancient city of Maresha, we dug, sifted through rubble to find treasures, and uncovered pieces of pottery that hadn’t been touched in 2200 years—since the time of the Maccabees! We then crawled through the very narrow passageways of caves! We had to squeeze our bodies through small tunnels and winding paths. At... Read More
4/18 – Second Grade Blog
Writers Workshop The second graders are working on studying sentences. They learned what a subject and predicate is and practiced identifying them in sentences. Then they worked collaboratively in sorting fragments and sentences. They are now able to explain if a fragment is missing the “who” or the “what”. Reading The students learned about the soft and hard sounds of c and g. The rule is that when a silent E follows c or g at the end of a word, the consonants make a soft sound. They then read passages and found words that follow this rule. They found... Read More
3/20 Second Grade Blog
Writers Workshop The second graders are once again published authors! The students celebrated with the kindergarten by reading their expert books to them. Then the kindergarteners read their stories to us! Reading In reading the students have been dissecting words and practicing reading multisyllabic words using different strategies. We tackle long words part by part by: working methodically from beginning to end, breaking the consonants in the middle, keeping digraphs together, breaking off endings, break before the consonant -le and checking all the parts! Math We continue to work on our multiplication unit. The past two weeks we focused on... Read More
3/1 Second Grade Blog
Writers Workshop Our writers have been busy adding lots of information to their expert books! They learned what a glossary is, how to use one and how to make their own. Then they added them to their expert books in alphabetical order while using the dictionary for the definitions! Reading We have been learning about singular and plural nouns. The students learned the rules: when the word has a vowel (a,e,i,o,u) before the letter y, you add the letters s and when the word has a consonant(b,c,d etc) before the letter y you remove the y and replace it with... Read More
2/10 Second Grade Blog
Reading We learned about contractions! What contractions are, why they are used, how to make them and how to read them. We are also noticing words that have powerful patterns and how we use them to read fluently. For example, if you can read the word night then you can read the work flight or sight in a snap! Math The second graders just finished a unit on weight focusing on grams and kilograms. We also compared objects and noticed when the scale it is even on both sides. We are now moving into a math second book! We will... Read More
1/13/23
Happy new year! It’s been great being back with the children in the classroom. Since our return from vacation we have been learning about the Civil Rights Movement and people who were instrumental in it during this time. We have been busy reading books about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Ruby Bridges and discussing how they were changemakers. The students have engaged in many rich conversations about how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks, and Ruby Bridge were instrumental key figures in the movement. They have also been learning and discussing a bit of the historical... Read More