Our Edot class weekday sessions were stock-filled with fun and games this past week. As we do every week, we began our session with snacks and doodling as I read out loud from "The Circlemaker" by Maxine Schur, sharing the story of life in a typical shtetl of the Pale of Jewish Settlement (the story takes place in the year 1852). The story focuses on the threat hanging over all Jewish boys aged 12-25, who might, at any minute, be dragged away from their homes to be forced to serve in Tsar Nicholas I's army.
As soon as I had read a chapter, the students cleaned up their tables ("Koolam la'koom v'l'nakot et ha'shoolchan" is the command I give in Hebrew, as segue into our Hebrew Through Movement activity. "Everyone get up and clean the table"). Then I immediately reviewed vocabulary we had learned in previous sessions, and introduced new vocabulary - this week and last, we've been focusing on adding in Purim holiday vocabulary.
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| Abby, l'halbeesh maseycha shel Pooreem. (Abby, put on a Purim mask.) |
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| Jeremy, la'tet ra'ashan l'Abby. (Jeremy, give Abby a grogger a/k/a noisemaker.) |
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| Abby, l'har'eesh ra'ashan me'al ha'rosh. (Abby, make noise with a noisemaker over the head.) |
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| Alexia, l'halbeesh maseycha shel Pooreem. (Alexia, put on a Purim mask.) |
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| Ashley, l'halbeesh keter shel malka. (Ashley, put on a queen's crown.) |
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| Emily, leef'to'ach m'geela shel Esther. (Emily, open a scroll of Esther.) |
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| Emily, l'hareem m'geela shel Esther. (Emily, lift up a scroll of Esther.) |
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| Ashley v'Alexia, leel'bosh keter shel malka. (Ashley and Alexia, put on a queen's crown.) Emily, leel'bosh maseycha shel Pooreem. (Emily, put on a Purim mask.) |
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| Callen v'Maddy, la'shevet al ha'keeseh shel melech v'malka. (Callen and Maddy, sit on the throne of the king and of the queen.) |
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| I also try to leave time each HTM session for literacy review -
recognizing written words we've learned during our HTM sessions, or
which we use every day in class (such as the daily schedule). Gabby,
l'hatzbee'a al ha'meelah 't'feela'. (Gabby, point to the word 't'feela.) |
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| Gabby, leengo'a ba'v'racha shel keedoosh. (Gabby, touch the blessing over wine.) |
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| Sometimes, I like to surprise the students with new commands, still using the words we've learned. Maddy, leen'go'a ba'seepoor shel Pooreem al ha'loo'ach. (Maddy, touch the Purim story on the bulletin board.) |
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| Callen, l'hatzbee'a al yam ha'teechon al mapat yisra'el. (Callen, point to the Mediterranean Sea on the map of Israel.) |
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| Joey, l'hatzbee'a al ha't'moona shel yeled al ha'shoolchan. (Joey, point to the picture of a boy on the table.) |
And finally, we act out a subject of the court bowing (l'heeshtachavot) before two queens of Purim:
Following our HTM session, we went to t'feela and then to hafsaka (prayer service and recess). When we returned, it was time for The Shekel Game (meeschak ha'sh'kaleem), a group review game after each major unit of study that tells me if there is any important information I need to review. As it turned out, the students both on Tuesday and Wednesday showed me by their answers that they had recalled almost all of the important information I had shared with them over the past six weeks relating to the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jews, as well as what we had learned about Shabbat and about tz'daka and g'meeloot Chasadeem (see my previous post), as they were having fun betting whether they could answer a question correctly or not.
And finally, during the last 15 minutes of each session, we went to the Shira classroom to join Shira for a song session with Eric where he taught us some Purim songs. First, "The Purim Game"...
... and then "Ani Purim" ("I Am Purim").
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