Uganda, Buddies, Math Celebration and More!

Buddy Time: 99th Day of School!

We met our buddies on Thursday, the 99th day of school. In honor of the 99th day we played Bingo in Hebrew and a special 99 related Bingo game.

 

Math

This week we officially finished our math 2A workbooks! As a final project the second graders created board games where they had to make problems from each unit we’ve learned. They enjoyed being creative and modeling their games after some favorites like “Sorry” “Shoots and Ladders” and “Trouble”. We had a blast playing these games and reviewing all that we have learned! The workbook is a supplemental material to the curriculum and we do not complete every page, so over the break if you have spare time have your child work on some empty pages to continue practicing math!

Writing and Reading

The second graders have all transformed into serious poets. We have learned about different kinds of poetry: rebus, haiku, shape, free verse, rhyming, and acrostic. We practiced writing all these forms of poetry and even went outside to collect items in nature to inspire our writing. Along with writing poems we have been reading many poems by famous authors to give us ideas on how we can craft our poems.

Over the break, have your child write a poem about something they have done during the week off from school. We’d love to read it!

Social Studies

This week was all about the job of a President. We read books about George Washington, the very first president, and discussed what are the challenges and advantages to being a president. We extended this idea and discussed what qualities must a person have to be a successful president. Words like “brave”, “thoughtful”, “serious”, and “peacemaker” were shared by the second graders. Second graders can’t wait to continue learning about the role of a president and the government in the weeks to come!

 

Judaics: Visit from Uganada Musician

As we conclude the study of creation in Chumash class, we turn to the topic of Shabbat. Why do we celebrate Shabbat? Who celebrates Shabbat? Where and How do different people celebrate Shabbat?

We read the book “Around the World in One Shabbat” about people celebrating in place like New England, Germany, Morocco, Australia, India, and Ethiopia.

We zeroed in on one community, the Abayudaya community of Uganda and learned more about them and how they celebrate Shabbat. A member of their community, Rachman, visited our music class and shared his stories and music with us.

 

Hebrew: Learning English Months in Hebrew

Since the English New Year we have been practicing the English months. We can now sing the names of all the months and can ask and tell eachother when our birthdays our. The second graders enjoy the challenge of singing the song and following along for solos with their own birthday month.

 

Israel: Memory Game

We used our last session with the Shinshinim before break to review all the places we visited this year. Students created a class memory game, each of them making a word and picture match of a place, body of water, or cardinal direction in Hebrew.

Art with Iviva:

Having hit winter’s midway point, second graders began thinking about bird migration. We reviewed the meaning of the word migration, and looked at images of the many birds that fly through Israel from Africa and Europe, making Israel a unique place to bird watch. Our drawing challenge was to draw at least three birds based on photographs using a black pen. This means we couldn’t erase. Iviva told us to turn things we considered mistakes into successes, and showed us some tricks for covering up a line we don’t like by turning it into shading or detail. Here are some of our birds.