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First Grade News

Dear Families,

In Hebrew, we learned the letters yud, lamed and hey. We added lots of new words to our word wall like, yam (sea), yad (hand), lechem (bread), lev (heart), lashon (tongue) and har (mountain) and our vocabulary just keeps growing. We continued to practice our reading and writing with all the letters and vowels that we have learned so far.

In Yahadut, we learned about the amidah prayer. We learned about the meaning of the prayer, when to bow, and how we stand.  We also talked about our forefathers (Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov) and our foremothers (Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah) and we added one more page to our siddurim. We spoke about the Sigd, an Ethiopian Jewish holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah (49 days after Yom Kippur) and is about wanting to return to Jerusalem. Many Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel and are celebrating this holiday at the kotel (western wall in Jerusalem) with colorful umbrellas and wearing white.

This week Parasha is Chayei Sarah This parasha is about finding a wife for Isaac. We learned about how kind and giving Rebecca was and we thought about times when we did acts of chesed (acts of kindness) and acted like Rebecca.

This week in math, we worked on building two skills. First is the commutative property— the idea that you can change the order of what you are adding, without changing the results. We practiced this skill by telling our partners number stories, then reversing them! We used animal counters to prove our stories were correct. We are also beginning to learn about place value! In first grade, we learn about place value slowly, building it into other math work we do.

In science, we are meteorologists! Students are learning about different types of weather, and writing facts about their favorites! Check out pictures of our work! Students wrote about thunderstorms, rain, snow, blizzards, and hurricanes, but the most popular type of weather to write about was tornadoes!

In Music, our First Graders have been reviewing the difference between steady beat and rhythm, as well as their knowledge of rhythmic notation. They have also been learning about our school’s namesake, Hannah Senesh. They have been singing the song Eli Eli, a poem by Hannah Senesh set to music by Israeli composer David Zehavi. You can look forward to hearing them sing it on Kesher Day!

We are excited to send homework on Monday! Keep an eye out for an email with details this weekend.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ilana, Talia, Liz, and Noa