Grating, Jumping, and Lots of Laughing

Our past two weekday sessions were filled with all of the above! First, the grating...

Under Karen's (Tuesday Session) and Stephanie's (Wednesday's Session) tutelage, we prepared Vegetable and Fruit Kugel Cupcakes - here's a batch ready to put in the oven. To get to this point, we had to do a lot of grating!

Here's Gabe beginning to grate an apple

And Maddie halfway through

The hardest part, as Michael realized, was getting a good grip on the fruit to grate it, without getting any fingers in the way. Thankfully, no Edot fingers were grated in the process!

Each fruit and vegetable was grated onto a piece of parchment paper, and when completed, the paper could be easily lifted up and the grated fruit or vegetable shaken gently into the mixing bowl. Here's Jeremy getting as much of the apple gratings as possible free from the grater.

Two carrots and half a large sweet potato also had to be grated. Callen is using a small grater for the carrot.

Jack preferred to grate the carrot directly into the bowl instead of onto the paper.

Emily and Alexia in grating mode. By the way, the Hebrew word "l'gared" means both to grate and to scratch!

As each ingredient was put into the mixing bowl, a student at each table crossed out the ingredient on the instruction sheet, to be sure it wasn't added in more than once. Here's Jeremy checking out the instructions.

Once all the grating was done, matzo meal, melted margarine, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and cinnamon were added into the mixture and stirred all together.

The final step before baking was to fill paper muffin holders about 2/3 of the way with the mixture. You could use a spoon...

...or your fingers.

Once we washed the hands, and the muffin pans went into the oven, it was time for hafsaka (recess.) Two weeks ago, Daniella ordered jump ropes (both the regular and Chinese variety), as well as large pieces of chalk for the students to play with during our 15-minute break. The jump ropes have proven to be very popular:

Back in the classroom, I decided to introduce the subject of Hanuka, the next holiday coming up on our Jewish calendar in a little over a month, with a game called "In the Manner of the Word." The game gave me a chance to find out what the students recalled from previous years about the events of the story, as well as about the customs and laws relating to the holiday.

After briefly reviewing what the students recalled about the Hanuka story and its laws and customs, I asked for volunteers to give me a complete sentence to write on the board relating to the story or the laws or customs. Once we had 5 sentences on the board, I asked for all the students to call out adverbs, which I hurriedly also wrote on the board. Once these two preliminary activities were completed, we could begin to play the game.  And here's how it's played:

A student volunteers to go out of the classroom, while another stands guard at the door to be sure the first student doesn't look through the narrow window to see what's going on in the classroom. A third student is then asked to come up to the board and quietly point to one of the adverbs ("the word") written on it - as Jeremy is doing here. Once all the students have seen which adverb has been chosen, the volunteer who went out of the room is allowed to re-enter.

The object of the game is for the volunteer who went out of the room to guess which adverb was chosen. To do so, s/he must choose another volunteer to stand up and act out one of the five sentences "in the manner of the (chosen) word." No words can be spoken or sounds made during the acting out process. The results can prove to be hilarious!

Here's Jack acting out "The Maccabees fought the Syrian Greeks, stupidly."

And here's Ashley acting out "We recite two blessings over the Hanuka candles, loudly."

There was no shortage of volunteers for acting out the sentences!

And everyone got the chance to get up and stretch their acting muscles.

We laughed so hard, we didn't hear the bell ring at the end of the session!

With this game, we are now beginning a mini-unit about the history behind the events of the Hanuka celebration. It's hard to believe, when we think of how we celebrate Hanuka today, that this holiday commemorates a period in our national history which was so traumatic to our sense of national identity and our relationship to God that early Talmudic era Rabbis nearly determined not to commemorate the events of this period at all. The fact that this holiday exists on our calendar is proof of the overall positive outlook of Judaism and the strength in its belief about the purpose of time and history.