New learning for a New Year

Happy 2021 Senesh Community!  As the new year unfolds, we are happy to share our new developments and contributions from our second grade scholars.  Please read on to learn about what our students are doing in each subject area.

General Studies – Jacob

It has been an exciting week in second-grade; not only are we back in the building, but we also have new pod groupings and new friendships to explore. To set the stage for the second half of the school year and help the children settle back into our school routines, we reflected on our community values of kindness, openness, responsibility, perseverance, and journey. The pods discussed the significance of each word and considered why our community believes in its importance. We then worked together to customize each value to live in the pods and nurture our work together. Throughout the week, children highlighted instances in our read alouds, behaviors, of our values in action. Ask your child how they have practiced one of our values this week?

Math, Science & Social-Emotional Learning – John

As we gracefully transitioned into our new pod learning environments, we are just so pleased to see the new shared learning opportunities and friendships, which are blossoming, from the new interactions and different perspectives of our students.  Our second grade mathematicians have begun a new thematic unit on Time and Money and were just so thrilled to make their paper clocks in our hands-on learning project.  They have learned how to show and tell time within five-minute intervals which leverages their strong skip-counting skills from previous learning with addition and subtraction with regrouping.

Our future scientists and global problem solvers have embarked upon a new scientific journey through the world of soil and plants and have contributed their creative artistic skills to our Secret Garden, a wall of colorfully designed diagrams which illustrate the different parts of a plant, as we closely examine their essential functions for life.

In our social-emotional sessions, we have begun to examine how different forms of communication lead to different kinds of relationships, practicing with different scenarios in the classroom.  We encourage our scholars to be their BEST, which teaches how to use the right kind of body language, eye contact, speech and tone of voice.  We use different archetypes like the mouse, the monster and the ME to symbolize the different forms of communicative behavior respectively; passive, aggressive and assertive.  The ME is the best of both other ways to be, who thinks clearly, says what they feel and respects the thoughts and feelings of others.  This is deeply connected with the important value of chesed, or kindness, empathy and compassion.

Hebrew & Judaic Studies – Ariana

It’s been wonderful to return to in person.  The children are getting comfortable with their new pods.  We have been playing lots of games to bond as a group and get to know our friends better.  We also wrote our hopes and dreams for this new half of the year with our new Pods.  With the winter celebration and Kesher day behind us we are now shifting our focus to Tu B’ Shevat.

In Hebrew, we are learning the parts of the trees and listening to many Tu B’Shevat stories such as “ Etz Gadol, Etz Katan” and “Lama Ohavim etzim”.  We continue to learn new letters using our workbook, Otiot kotvot. We learned Chaf soffit and mem soffit. We are also practicing Hebrew reading and script writing, and it is getting better and better each day.  Each pod is creating together a communal tree out of paper. Each child wrote in Hebrew a sentence expressing why we love trees.

In Judaic Studies, we have started a wonderful Social Action project. 2nd grade is joining the Senesh community to donate food for those in need.  We read the story “Maddi’s Fridge”.  This is a story of two friends, one who is experiencing food insecurity and the other who offers to help her friend in need.  Kita bet is making signs to encourage the rest of the Senesh Community to donate food for the communal fridge to participate in the Senesh Campaign.

Please join us in this awesome campaign.  As a community, Senesh has set a goal to make 100 community fridge donations.  We encourage everyone to donate healthy food.  Suggested items include: vegetables, eggs, milk, packaged deli meat, cheese, and canned soup or beans.

Please take a picture of you and your family donating at a community fridge and email to Communications Manager Carley Balazs cbalazs@hannahsenesh.org.  You can also post the photo to Instagram with the hashtag #SeneshCommunityFridge  I hope our class will participate in this amazing and meaningful campaign.  Looking forward to continuing learning together in the weeks ahead!.

Music – Heidi

Second graders continue to work on their rhythm reading, saying and playing. This week, they learned about individual eighth notes and eighth note rests. Then, we had fun listening to, moving to and playing the drum parts of “Hail to the Chief,” the Presidential Anthem, a march that has been played for Presidents on Inauguration Day and other important occasions for over 200 years.

Thank you parents, families and all members of our learning community for supporting our students to thrive and do their best.  Stay tuned for our next blog post in early February and stay warm.

The Second Grade Team