Picture the scene: it’s about 10 am on the brisk, sunny last Friday of winter break, and sunlight is streaming in through the windows of our gathering space, illuminating a group of fifteen kids aged four through twelve sitting in a circle on the rainbow rug. In the crowd, there is a tiger, a Spiderman, one middle-schooler dressed in vintage…

Wow God, ruler of the universe, who kept us alive, kept us in existence, and brought us to this time! This is the translation of the shehecheyanu, a brachah (blessing) that Jewish people say to acknowledge the beginning of holidays and other first times or rare experiences. Our learners encountered and unpacked this brachah as part of our new unit…

The Garinim (K-1st grade) have been studying the story of Yosef, with all its trials and challenges, while exercising empathy for all the characters involved. When they reached the part of Yosef’s story where his brothers travel to Mitzrayim (Egypt) for rations and reunite with their long-lost brother, the learners had many feelings about how this played out. Educators used…

Three teens stretch out on an enormous circular, rainbow colored rug, surrounded by posters covered in printed text from TaNaKh, Talmud, Mishneh, modern books, and government documents, as well as post-it notes posing follow-up questions and colorful sharpie-scrawled annotations to match. They’ve been annotating the texts on these posters for 7 weeks. In this moment, they are silent, though this…

When we hear the word transformation some of us might think of caterpillars turning into butterflies or tadpoles into frogs, but some of the most profound transformations that come to mind for me are from Torah. Our current unit at Makom on transformations has the Shorashim (1st-2nd graders) looking at the story of Yosef who goes from favorite son, to…

Drumroll please! I proudly present to you, the Makom Community Brit (two-way promise) for the 24-25 school year. These are the promises or community agreements we’re making to each other in order to help everyone at Makom feel safe, loved, and ready to learn. At Makom Community we… Help people when they want it. Listen to each other. Respect each…

Starting the school year off by chasing after tzedek (justice) can be a challenging feat to accomplish, but this year especially our Makom Lab School is in a prime position to do this first hand! Being in the third week and going into the fourth week of teaching at Makom, things are finally starting to fall into place, but that…

This fall at Makom, we’re starting out the year by doing a deep dive into tzedek, the value of justice. Tzedek comes up over and over again in Jewish wisdom, most famously in Deuteronomy 16:20, which calls upon us to view justice as something that “you will chase after, that you may live and own the land that Adonai your…

The whole educator team at Makom Community puts a lot of hard work into planning thoughtful, goal-driven, meaning-making lessons for our kiddos. We’re proud of our curriculum and excited to see what the kiddos do with it. And also, it’s important for us to let the learning truly follow our students’ interests and inquiries, even when that means scrapping our…

At Makom our mission is deeply tied to the belief that Torah is always timely. When we learn Torah, there is always wisdom we can glean for right here and now. As we begin this school year, our goal is to create space within the safe container of Makom Community for our learners and their families to imagine…what would the…

10. Journey out of Egypt Obstacle Course To dive into our unit on Matan Torah, our Garinim (K and 1st grade) learners had their classroom transformed into an obstacle course that took them on a journey through the desert and acted out the story of Bnei Yisrael leaving Egypt. Bringing learners into the text allowed them to fully embody the…

To celebrate Shavuot and the end of the school year, the Shorashim (1st and 2nd grade)  and Nitzanim (3rd and 4th grade) Kvutzot each put together their version of a Tikkun Leil Shavuot for the other learners to participate. If those words have you confused, you are not alone– Shavuot, since is falls after the school year, is not as…

In April, all the learners in Jewish enrichment at Makom embarked upon a detailed study of the 10 commandments, taking a day or two to deep dive into each one. Since I started working at Makom in mid-March, my first two weeks were full of Purim celebrations and spring break camp, so this was my first chance to build and…

At Makom Community, ‘community’ permeates every aspect of what we do. From Family Shabbat to learner showcases to School’s Out Camp, we structure lessons, learning experiences, and multi-modal activities with our collective, rather than the individual, in mind. Cohort-based learning is the foundation of our approach to Jewish Enrichment. Although we prioritize student-led instruction, we take it upon ourselves to…

We hope you all had a sweet Pesach and enjoyed some time contemplating and answering the myriad of Pesach-related questions your kiddos came up with. One of my favorites was: “Do we have to eat matzah just because Bnei Yisrael’s (the Jewish people’s) bread didn’t rise while they were leaving Egypt? Why can’t we just know about the story and…

The first years of Makom Community were beautifully messy, challenging, and exhausting. You might wonder… How did things get started? How did you figure out that there was such a clear need for this new model and pedagogy of Jewish education for kids and their families? How did you keep going when things were challenging? What challenges has Makom overcome…

On any given day, our kids do a lot of counting! Kids count down until they have to transition from one activity to the next or until it is time to clean up from a day of learning. When do you notice you or your family counting down time?  Starting on the second night of Passover, we’re presented with a…

There is a teaching philosophy that I come across fairly often: be the teacher you needed when you were younger. As Anafim (5th-7th grade) educator, I’ve found myself immensely privileged to continuously have conversations with these kids and impart knowledge that would have been invaluable to me as a learner in their place. Nothing solidified this more for me than…

Every Thursday, the Nitzanim crew has their own Tefilah: Prayer, Music, and Movement, allowing them to connect as a Kvutzah in a different way than on the other days when they share the time with Anafim. When I started leading this group in Tefilah, I noticed a few things. Learners were getting very curious about prayer – what does it…

Our Makom Community Torah tells a story. The physical Torah scroll that we are so lucky to have and use at Makom Community, has been on a journey to get to where it is today, and looking at it, you can tell. When we received this Torah from our friends and neighbors up at Beth Sholom in Elkins Park. It…

Jewish Folklore is a body of work amassed over thousands of years of everyday storytelling that reflects the values, superstitions, beliefs, and fears of the global Jewish community. I became enamored by folklore when I was just a kid, confused by the fact that such stories, many of which are quite dark and spooky, were traditionally created for and shared…

The Torah can be intimidating to even the most experienced Jewish learners. How do we make something that is so vast and ingrained in Jewish tradition accessible and engaging to learners ages 5-10? At Makom, we want Torah to be a resource that our learners can turn to and integrate into their lives how they see fit.  One way our…