Happy Hanukkah Hannah Senesh!!

Greetings Senesh Community,

Please follow below to join our winter academic journey with our inquisitive second-grade scholars as our year comes to a close and our new year approaches.  Always, we are excited to share our latest developments in all content areas.

General Studies – Jacob

Around this time each year, as reading skills strengthen and solidify, a remarkable transformation takes place. Seven-year-olds who have been working tirelessly over the years to learn to read are now ready for the enjoyment and satisfaction of reading to learn! This statement couldn’t be more true for our second-graders at Hannah Senesh. For the past couple of weeks, we have honed our skills as nonfiction readers learning how to use texts to grow knowledge about a topic. While it may seem straightforward, our second-graders realized that nonfiction readers do different things while reading. For instance, they study the whole page of a nonfiction text, paying close attention to the words, pictures, and diagrams, knowing that all the parts of the page contain essential information. They also learned how to read and understand new keywords that are important for the topic but not commonly used in everyday life. Ask your child what new knowledge they have learned in the past few weeks, and maybe encourage them to read more nonfiction books if they would like to become an expert on an interesting topic.

Math & Science – John

Our mathematicians have been crunching away on 3-digit subtraction up to 1000 with regrouping in the hundreds and tens places.  Once again, we have gracefully transitioned from the classroom to remote learning and back to the classroom again in time for Hanukkah.  We have been polishing the edges of our showcase for our publishing party this Friday, as our second-grade scholars explain their subtraction strategies using regrouping in the algorithm.  They further develop their metacognition skills by checking their work with addition for precision and accuracy.  I’m so proud to witness how our learners have truly risen to the challenge of speaking on video to guide their self-directed thought processes.

Our future scientists of the earth neatly packed their learning on their journey through the states of matter which a substance undergoes as a product of temperature change.  We are excited for our unit on mixtures and solutions as we flesh out new key vocabulary to support our understanding that all solutions are mixtures but not all mixtures are solutions.

Hebrew & Judaic Studies – Arianna

It’s been a great few weeks full of learning. Last week we read the book “King Solomon and the Bee” and learned you should never underestimate anyone, not even a bee, and it’s important to be forgiving and kind to others.  In Chumash we continued learning new pesukim (vav, zyin, chet, tet and yud).  We learned that God created the sky and the ancient word used in the Torah for it is “Rakia” (Shamaim). We also learned that the word Yabasha means Land or “Haretz”.

This week we shifted our focus to Chanukah.  First the children learned the story of the glorious Maccabees and their unlikely triumph against the powerful Greek army.  Second graders learned about the miracle of the oil and how the oil lasted 8 days as opposed to one day.  We also reviewed the traditions linked to the miracle of the oil. Jews eat fried food such as levivot (latkes) and sufganiot (donuts) to remember the miracle of the oil that happened long ago.  Additionally, we reviewed the brachot we have to say when lighting the Chanukiah and learned the meaning behind each letter on the dreidl, the sevivon.  The students watched multiple Chanukah videos and got into the Chanukah spirit dancing to the Macabeats and their awesome songs.  Finally, we discussed diverse ways within the community of celebrating the holiday within the Jewish community.  The Story, “Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas”shares how a Jewish Indian family incorporates Indian traditions in the celebration of Chanukah.  We realized that every family is different and everyone brings interesting traditions that make the holiday happier and more fun.

In Hebrew we continued learning new Hebrew script letters and practicing our Hebrew reading and word recognition.  We learned the letters: lamed, mem, nun, nun soffit, kaf, dalet, vav,tet and gimmel.  We also are currently working on a class book to share all the great things we do in Kita Bet.  We are preparing for our publishing party and can’t wait to share with you all our accomplishments.  Looking forward to continuing our learning together in the weeks to come.

Music – Heidi

Second Graders are perfecting their music reading skills by examining, reading through and playing songs. They’re looking forward to sharing these skills with you at their publishing party next week!

We wish all families in the Senesh Community a blessed Hanukkah and a healthy and prosperous new year in 2021.