December 17: Holidays and Events

Humanities 

We are beyond thrilled that so many of you were able to join us for our Conference on Civilizations. The 5th graders were so excited to share their hard work with you.

To finish up this semester, we will learn about the other civilizations in Mesopotamia before moving into Ancient Egypt after the New Year. We will also complete our Memoir project including several writing pieces and a visual representation of who we are. Finally, we will begin some learning about neurodiversity and people with disabilities in preparation for book clubs.

A few fun notes from our semester together:

1. We have read 54 books as a class which are displayed on our “Books We’ve Read” board
2. Our classroom has a hydroponic herb garden with dill, basil, parsley, mint, and thyme. Now that our plants are mature, the herbs make for a delicious snack!

Judaics 

We had a wonderful time learning our sources for Hanukkah and skillfully using them to support our opinions for the Great Nes Debate. It was so nice to hear students speak with such passion about which Nes is the most helpful to focus on. They really took our lessons of “Elu VElu” “openness” into the debate and were able to fully hear each other’s point of view with an open mind. They had Katie and I going back and forth with which side we would vote for with their persuasive points. If you haven’t asked them about their opinion yet I recommend it!

We are back in the routine of Chumash now. We will begin learning trope (music notes for chanting Torah) after break using our Chumash text from Bereshit. Right now we are focusing on learning grammar concepts and roots that will help us be independent translators of the Torah. We also have been working on asking text based questions (Kushiyot). Currently we are translating the text with the scene where Joseph’s brothers throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. We will use this moment in our text to talk about “up-standers and bystanders” we will also explore “why people do bad things” and the Jewish mourning practices. I look forward to sharing about these important topics in our next blog.

Please encourage your child to study their vocab a little over break. It can be found on google classroom. They have all been doing a wonderful job so far learning at their own pace and improving with each challenge we take!

Shabbat Shalom,

Laura

Hebrew with Yuliya

This month in Hebrew class was in the spirit of Hanukkah. As most of you know, Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday of miracle, heroism and belief. So we learned the biography of Henry Grinberg who was a famous baseball player in America. He refused to play in Yom Kippur because of his Jewish  identity and he wasn’t afraid. He was a hero. Then we learned the story of Hanukkah and the necessary vocabulary to describe it. Students played games, they competed with their peers about the traditions of this holiday and history. While they played they studied new words, grammar and how to use  verbs correctly according to the time.The next topic was “The synagogue Turo”. It was amazing to see 5th graders speaking in Hebrew about the Portuguese Jews who came as a lot of new immigrants to America to find freedom of religion. In addition to learning about the history of synagogue they enriched their knowledge about their country. As a final assignment they wrote the story of this synagogue based on the pictures. This is a miracle to see my students are growing up in Hebrew and be part of this.

שבת שלום! חופשה נעימה!

יוליה

Hebrew Heritage

להורים שלום

התחלנו לעבוד על יחידה חדשה בנושא הספורט. היחידה עוסקת בתחומים שונים של הספורט, לאוהדים בין אוהד ״שרוף״ לאוהד ספה. הלימוד נעשה באמצעות סיפורים קצרים, ראיונות עם שחקנים, סרטים. משבוע הבא גם נקשיב לשירים ישראלים שנכתבו במיוחד על קבוצות שונות בספורט, כמו גם נאזין ל״שירים ושערים״ האגדי ועוד.

מאחלת לכולכם חופשה נעימה,

אילנה

Math

Decimals, decimals, decimals!! We have spent the last couple of weeks learning all about decimals. The 5th grade will continue with decimals after the break moving into multiplying and dividing decimals. When we get back from break, students can look forward to opening their own restaurant, creating their own menus and dining at each other’s restaurants. It is a super fun project that not only lets their creativity shine, but also practice real life skills. Next time you go out to eat, you can ask your child to estimate the bill or ask them to add up the total. 

Science

I missed the last blog, so here comes a big update! 

For a little Thanksgiving / Hanukkah fun, the 5th graders paused their work on the Physics of Flight to do a two week STEAM project and test out our school’s new green screen. Students were tasked to collaborate on a “Thanksgivukah Parade” aka a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that told the story of Hannukah instead. We started by retelling the story of Hannukah and breaking the story into parts. Then each student thought of symbols that could represent their assigned part on a balloon. Then we created! Students also needed to write “commentary” for their balloon to read when the balloon hit Herald Square and had its T.V. debut. For our fourth class, we filmed. This is when we learned some important green screen tips and tricks for the future– like the fact that yellow is too close to green and becomes see-through too! I really enjoyed checking out this new technology with the group.

Check out our parades here:

5A.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upa4hTRXnVI

5B  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBfd1zvOATU

As we head into winter break, we are now back on our Physics of Flight unit. We spent the classes this week learning about the properties of air through a series of experiments. If you have a water bottle and a balloon at home, your students can show you how to prove that air pressure exists!

Check out all the pictures from our classes this year: