Exploring new Chumashim and Textile Field Trip!

Chumash 

Students were so excited to explore their new chumashim after yesterday’s fabulous Chumash Ceremony!

They were especially excited to find verses in their new books that they recognized from class an the play. They started to get to know their new books by looking for this week’s parsha and finisng familar names and stories.

Questions and Comments heard in class:

“Where can I find the Pesach story?”

“I found Ezra’s name!”

“Does my book have Megillat Esther?”

“I found a map of the route that the Israelite’s took from Egypt!”

“This is the pasuk that I read in the Chumash play!”

“Parashat Breisheet is only eight pages?!!!”

Second Graders Explore their New Chumashim after Ceremony from Hannah Senesh on Vimeo.

Field Trip

In order to prepare for our field trip this week we learned about alternative uses for plants. During our lesson on Thursday we observed, smelled, and tasted four types of herbs: rosemary, sage, beets, and thyme. As we investigated the herbs we learned different facts about each. For example, cilantro can help with digestion, rosemary grows well by the Mediterranean sea, sleeping with thyme under your pillow was once thought to stop bad dreams, and sage was used by Ancient Romans to soothe sore throats. We also rubbed the herbs on paper to see what type of color we could extract from each, and then learned more about different plants that can be used to naturally dye fabric. We even watched a short video clip about natural dyes filmed at the Brooklyn Textile Arts Center. The video taught us more about the chemistry behind natural dyes. Read more about our science-related field trip below!  

Today we took a field trip to the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn. We walked a few short blocks on Carroll Street, where we learned about another natural dye – indigo. Students learned about the ancient Japanese technique of Shibori dyeing, similar to our understanding of tie-dye, where folding and tying the fabric in different ways create beautiful patterns. After watching different folding and rubber band-ing techniques, students had the opportunity to try their hand with these techniques. We learned that the color of the indigo is initially green, and that the natural dye reacts with the oxygen in the air to create blue. We also learned that the shade of the indigo – ranging from light to dark, dark blue – is controlled by leaving the fabric in the dye for a short amount of time (to yield a light blue) or very long (to allow for dark blue). Ask your child what he or she enjoyed about our visit to the textile arts center!