Wild and crazy sukkahs, post-season baseball and dugongs!?!?

Last month we learned a lot about Sukkot and explored all different kinds of sukkahs. Noah and some friends built this Sukkah at the Oakhurst Community Garden Project:

They are so fast!

In order to be a sukkah, a structure must be temporary, made out of natural materials, and have a see through roof.

We played sukkah memory and saw all different kinds of sukkahs, including one built on the back of a pick-up truck and one built outside an apartment window!

Theo beat us all. His favorite was the dog sukkah.

When the Atlanta Braves made it to the post-season last month...

..we read several stories about Sandy Koufax.

Of course, we know that Koufax was a great Jewish baseball player, and that he made a hard decision when he chose not to play in the world series on Yom Kippur. After learning about Koufax, we discussed how difficult the decision must have been for him, but focused on his teammates and how this must have felt for them and how they responded. Koufax's team members were largely supportive. Sometimes it's hard to support a friend when you don't understand why they are doing something, but it's important to be open-minded and respectful.

We've learned about two different Israeli animals since we last blogged: The Asiatic Chamor (Donkey) and...

The DUGONG!

Because of Israel's diverse and foreign climate, there are many interesting animals that live there that we have never even hear of before!
We are good at applying the animal science we learn at school to the animals we learn about in Jewish Kids Groups. We know how to identify mammals and reptiles and how to determine if an animal lives in a pack...
These pictures are from last month.
Before Yom Kippur we made a list of things we were sorry for and a list of things we felt others should be sorry for. Then we recited the whole list TOGETHER, just as is the tradition on Yom Kippur. We all apologized (even for things we didn't do) on behalf of the whole Jewish people.

Listen up Jewish people, Israeli Ibex, and Delicious Red Delicious!

As always we started Jewish Kids Groups with a team challenge and the Shma. Our challenge was "light as a feather stiff as a board," an old camp game. Only, we said, "kal as a feather, light as a board," and learned the Hebrew word for light, or easy, while we tackled our challenge.

This week Noah led us in Shma in English. We've been discussing the real purpose of the prayer. Noah shouted, "Listen up Jewish people! The Lord is our Gd: the one and only Gd!"

Each week we are learning about a different Israeli animal and demonstrating our learning through a collaborative poster and conversation. This week we learned about the Israeli Ibex.


We watched several clips of Ibexes and summarized what we learned about the animal from each each video.


Here were two of our favorites:

Then we collaborated to design a poster that described the Israeli ibex:


This week we also did a massive Rosh Hashana taste test. In order to make sure we all have the sweetest of new years, we sampled 5 different kinds of apples and answered the following questions about each:

What is the apples texture?
What does it smell like?
What color and apple variety is it?
How sweet is it on a scale of 1-10?
How much do we like it plain on a scale of 1-10?
How much do we we like it with honey, on a scale of 1-10?

We love Golden Delicious with honey! Happy New Year!


At the end of the day we explored the different varieties of shofarim and practiced our shofar notes again: Happy Birthday World!

Tekiah = one long blast
Shevarim = three medium blasts
Teruah = 9 short blasts

Shofar bla-a-a-a-sts, Jews from Yemen and Mediterranean monk seals!

We had a stellar first 2010 Jewish Kids Groups!

We started our session with a team challenge: We had to work together to figure out how to get our whole group across the bed of "hot lava" with our one pair of "lava proof shoes."


We collaborated, tried a few different ideas and successfully completed our mission. Good teamwork!


Later, we watched some short clips about Mediterranean monk seals which live off the coast of Israel:

Mediterranean monk seals live in warm water, are mammals, and are badly endangered :(

Each week we will learn about a different Israeli animal and demonstrate our learning through a collaborative poster and conversation:



We are also doing a series on Jews in Israel: Where did they come from?

This week we focused on Jews from Yemen, ask you kids about Yemen and about how the Yemeni Jews got to Israel. Ana narrated the video (below) for us (because the actual narration is aimed at adults). It's from the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives (a great resource!).

We were amazed at what these Jews endured in order to get to Israel and were so impressed by how other Israelis helped them in their journey.

Rosh Hashana is coming!
After hearing a kinda made up/kinda true story about Jewish villages shouting "Shana Tova Tikatayvoo" (happy sweet, new year!), we worked in groups of two and created signs for the different shofar notes:
Tekiah = one long blast
Shevarim = three medium blasts
Teruah = 9 short blasts

We looked at pictures of real shofars, so were big, some small, some curly, and then all practiced the shofar notes on our recorders.