Translating History into Skits

We used our weekday sessions this past week to begin writing skits for our upcoming Family Chamsa Workshop. Sharing a good portion of the 2,500 year history of the Babylonian/Iraqi edah was quite a challenge, so writing skits about the major eras and events in the history will hopefully help the students become more familiar with the era or event their group was assigned. This week, students filled out a worksheet, which questions helped them recall specific facts relating to their assigned era and which also gave them an opportunity to create fictional characters to help relate the history in a dramatic form.

Each group was given an outline of the major events and eras in Babylonian/Iraqi Jewish history to which they could refer when answering the questions.

A recorder in each group wrote down the agreed upon answers.

During our next weekday sessions, the students will use the information they collected on the worksheets to write their skits.

I continued to introduce new Tu Bish'vat vocabulary this week during our Hebrew Through Movement session:

Grace, l'kachat pri banan mee'toch sal ha'peirot... (Grace, take a banana fruit from inside the fruit basket...)

...v'la'seem et ha'banan al ha'rosh. (...and put the banana on the head.)

Seth, la'seem et sal ha'peirot al ha'rosh. (Seth, put the fruit basket on the head.)

Emily S., la'seem et ha'banan al ha'rosh eem ha'yad ha'y'meenee, v'la'seem yad s'molee al ha'rosh shel Emily F.; Emily F., la'seem pri agas al ha'beten. (Emily S., put the banana on the head with the right hand, and put the left hand on the head of Emily F.; Emily F., put the pear fruit on the stomach.)

Charlotte, leetfos et pri he'agas! (Charlotte, catch the pear fruit!)

Ariston, l'galgel et pri he'agas al ha'reetzpa. (Ariston, roll the pear fruit on the floor.)

Peter, la'seem et pri he'agas al ha'rosh v'lalechet mee'saveev la'shoolchan; Leo, la'seem et pri ha'leemon al ha'rosh shel Peter, v'lalechet eem Peter mee'saveev la'shoolchan. (Peter, put the pear fruit on the head and walk around the table; Leo, put the lemon fruit on Peter's head and walk with Peter around the table.)

During our community activity time at the beginning of each session this week, our seventh grade coordinator and youth group leader Jory visited us in the Beit Knesset, and shared a video he put together to introduce the next Simcha Youth Group activity coming up on Saturday, January 23rd - a visit to the Exploratorium and Tactile Dome in San Francisco. We want to encourage our fifth and sixth graders to participate in as many Simcha Youth Group activities as possible during the year. The Simcha activities give the children a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other outside of the classroom, and to hopefully form a tight-knit community - one which they'll feel a special part of throughout their JQuest experience and on into their teenage years at Noar Night. And that's all while they're having a fun experience!

Here's part of the video that Jory shared:

Since the lawn outside the Sanctuary where we spend our recess (hafsaka) time each weekday session was soaking wet on Wednesday, we decided to use the 10 minutes back in the Beit Knesset with a community activity which our Y'tzira teacher, Maimone, put together. It's a drama game where two volunteers draw a slip of paper with a Jewish value written on it from a basket, then decide how to act out the value for the audience to guess from a list of acting options such as a Shakespearean tragedy, slow-motion, a musical, etc. 

In the video segment below, our two Edot students, Aaron and Tobias are acting out the Jewish value of studying Torah as a detective mystery:

On Tuesday, the Round Table pizza delivery was delayed, and by the time the deliveryman arrived, a very long line had formed. No one was going anywhere without their pizza!!! 

Kudos to Daniella for staying calm and focused during the crisis!