Raining and Rainbows

Parshas Noach

The Torah portion came to life in our classroom this week.

Thank you Hashem for starting off this week with some thunder, lightning and rain so our Californian friends have a foundation to start the topic of what happened to Noach.

Yanky, creating his own rain scene and Esther experimenting how rain works coming from the cloud.

Arik and Yanky practicing their number recognition matching the correct number  clothespin on the raindrop numbers.

We learned a lot about how the "Mabul" flood took place. Noach's family were the only honest people in the whole world. Hashem wanted Noach to create a Teiva which took him 120 years! 

Shmuel and Chanie creating the three different levels in the Teiva.

After we learned the whole story we talked about Hashem's sign of the rainbow, a promise that the flood would never happen again and our job to fill the world with light.

We turned our bulletin board into our 'Uvichein' (the practical lesson of the parsha)  of this message.

The children have been hearing a lot about how we keep our classroom safe, we do this by being HELPFUL. 

We will be documenting how they have been demonstrating these helpful actions in our class and how we are practically lighting up this world by being safe and helpful.

Yanky and Sholom wanted to be helpful and wash the dishes we used during center time. 

The people in the world by Noach's time, even when they made mistakes they did NOT want to ever fix them. We learned that we make mistakes but the difference is we have a chance to fix it!

When some of our family pictures got broken, our entire class helped in the process of making sure they were fixed and back up.

Arik has a broken shoulder and we wanted to make sure we could all be a friend and help keep him safe while it is recovering. He showed us pictures from his x-ray it was quite fascinating learning about our bones.

While we did our safe keeper ritual, we had Arik hold the box and we all committed to making sure he had space and was comfortable.

Fun rainbow activities.

Continuing our Alef Beis work.

What a perfect week to learn about mem which is mayim-water. Just like we can not survive without water, the Jewish people cant survive without Torah.

It has been so exciting to finally use the big screen in our classroom. While learning about final mem and how it is like a well with hidden water (the hidden Torah will be taught when moshiach comes!)

 we watched how a real well works.

Practicing our balloon breathing. We took a deep breath into our nose while Shmuel was blowing up a balloon.

We also learned a new breathing technique called draining breathing in lifting our hands. Then tightening our fists and breathing out while 'opening' the faucet and letting the water out.

Teiva (ark) means boat but also WORD. 

We learned that Hashem wants us to go into the 'word'- davening. There could be a flood (when not good things happen) but we can always turn to Hashem and daven to Him. 

We took this opportunity to learn the first of the morning brachas. Knowing the difference between light-good choices and dark-bad choices.