This week we are celebrating Lag BaOmer, a Jewish holiday on the 33rd day of the Omer. We’re counting up 49 days from the 2nd night of Passover. The 50th day will be the holiday of Shavuot when Jews celebrate receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Omer is a time of mourning for the Jewish people. Some Jews observe…
Category: Learning this Week
Smell You Later!
This week we are discovering what kinds of brachot (blessings) we say over smells! We are delving into smell’s relationship with taste, memory, and how we feel. We are exploring the way smell enriches our lives and brings us into the present. Read on to hear about the smelly activities we have been doing! We are making bath fizzies using…
Thunderbolts and Lightning, Very Very Frightening!
This week we are learning all about thunder, lighting and rainbows and exploring the ways we can appreciate them as parts of creation, even though they can be scary. We are spending time talking about how these elements feel, what they look and sound like, how we feel about them, and the science behind them. We are learning the brachot…
Noticing Nature
This week at Makom Community, we are paying attention to the parts of creation that make us gasp in amazement. We began with a nature walk through the city. We noticed nature and took lots of pictures along the way. Read on to see what we noticed: I made that face because a bug just tried to go in my eye! The flower was the shape of a bell pepper. …
Makom Community Leaves Egypt
Last week, we completed the final stretch of our Pesach (Passover) unit. We did Bedikat Chametz (checking for bread products) by playing hide and seek games with chametz (bread products). And we did Biyur Chametz by destroying all the chametz. We closed out our week with a camp day about the leaving Egypt story. Read on to get the details! We had lots of fun hiding chametz around Makom Community. One day our older and younger students hid chametz for each other. For Biyur Chametz we…
Sweet Freedom
This week we have been enjoying our status as free people! What are things that free people get to do? Read on to find out! Free people get to make music! We were fortunate enough to have Ami Yares come visit. He helped us write a song, and performed a fabulous concert! Check out our song writing process: These are…
Chocolate Seder
This week at Makom Community, we had our very own chocolate Seder! We have been doing a deep dive into haggadah over the past few months, and this was a delicious way to let your kiddos use what they’ve been learning about! Take a look and see some pictures of our tasty Seder! We tasted the sweetness of freedom as…
Agreeing To Disagree
What do we do when we disagree? With each other? With a text? With Torah? It happens! This week we wrestled with a Pesach classic, Dayenu.What? Wrestled? But that song is so catchy! It’s also pretty violent and poses some values that we don’t share and that aren’t totally comfortable to us at Makom Community. The premise of Dayenu is thanking God for all the things that God did…
Purim Adventures!
This week has been a grand Purim adventure! We celebrated with sweet treats, fabulous crafts, and wacky theater. Read on for the delicious details! We baked our own hamantashen and we also made hamantashen groggers, but we kept our wits together enough to tell them apart. We have spent the past couple weeks crafting and rehearsing our very own Purim Shpiel, complete with homemade props and costumes, dance…
Q and A with Erev!
This week our 3-5th graders are practicing their question asking in preparation for Pesach! We had them look through a section of the Hagaddah, list 3 questions, say what page of the Hagaddah their question came from, and then pass their page of questions to a friend. Then the friend looked in the Hagaddah on those pages to find an answer. Here are their questions and answers! Q:…
The Four Children
This week we stepped into the shoes of the four children at the Pesach (Passover) seder. Often these four children are described as wise, wicked, simple, and unable to ask a question. We unpacked all of those qualities and looked at how we can be like any of these four kiddos at any given time. Read on to see what your multifaceted…
With Great Freedom Comes Great Responsibility
This week we went on a journey back in time, to when we were slaves in Egypt. What was it like being a slave? How did we become free people? Once we got back to present day at Makom Community, we discussed the things that enslave people today, and we explored what freedom means to us. Most importantly, we talked about what…
Wacky Backwards Words (try saying that ten times, fast)!
In conclusion, last week was extra silly and fun here at Makom Community! What? This blog is wackbards! Er, I mean backwards. That’s because its Purim Katan, which is a time of wacky, backwards, joyous nonsense. We mixed things up with extra treats, Ivrit (Hebrew language) games, calendar exploration, a surprise snow day, and backwards shenanigans. Stay tuned next week for a…
Yachatz: Brokenness and Repair
This week we broke into Yachatz, which is the part of the Pesach Seder where we break the middle Matzah as a way to remember the way the world was broken when the Jews were leaving Egypt. It is also a way for us to think about the ways the world might be broken today, and what systems are in…
One Crazy Time
One crazy time at Makom Community, we started a brand new unit! This week we started our unit on Haggadah, the story of how we became the Jewish people. It’s a story we tell often, but especially on Pesach. Take a look and see our first steps on this exciting adventure! We experienced the joy of grape juice by making…
Tefilah: End Of Unit Project!
This week we wrapped up our unit on Tefilah (prayerful conversation). This unit culminated in a final project where kids made panels that represent each of the tefilot we do. Continue on to get a glimpse into our process! We began with a conversation about what Tefilah helps people do: Ask God questions, because we want things we can’t get at Target. Believe that things…
What Does God Do?
This week we delved into the second paragraph of the amidah called gevurot. Gevurot lists some of the ways God’s powers and presence manifest in our world. We unpacked what some of those powers are, what they look like, and how we can do them too! One thing that stuck with me was when a kindergartener said that we could be godlike by…
Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want
This week we dove into the story of where Yaakov visits his uncle Lavan who tricks him into marrying his daughter Leah before he was able to marry Rachel. Following that Rachel and Leah have a baby-having-contest (go here for details). We explored this story, specifically with an eye for what the characters want, what they need, and how we…
Makom Community: An Origin Story
This week we are exploring a text that is near and dear to Makom Community’s personal history. We are looking at the story of Yaakov and the dream he had in a very special makom (place). In this dream, Yaakov receives some important information about his future: he is lying on the VERY land that his descendants will inherit, and…
Tefilah: Building toward Lifelong Personal & Communal Mindfulness
Makom Community is in an exciting place with regard to Tefilah (prayerful conversations) right now. With our new space and growing groups of both older Erev and younger Boker students, we have all kinds of thrilling, new opportunities to expand our model for teaching Tefilah. Our younger students engage with Tefilah in a few ways: 1) Communal Singing 2) Movement…
Oh No—Maybe Tefilah Can Help!
Have you ever desperately wanted something that you couldn’t have? What was that like? What did you do about it? What kind of support would you have wanted in that moment? This unit, we’re examining stories about the avot and imahot (patriarchs and matriarchs), with an eye to moments of tefilah (prayerful conversation) that these characters have. One such moment…
How would you parent if you could ALWAYS remember that you are LOVED?
As we worked with our learners this fall to craft our brit (communal expectations) anew through the lens of our unit studying Shema, we have been talking a lot about what it means to love and to show love. Our students came up with this brit text that we have all agreed to rely on each other to do: Speak with…
Tefilah As Conversation: Magen Avraham
Tefilah isn’t just prayer, music, and movement, it is also a conversation! We started a new unit where we are unpacking the ways in which Tefilah can be a conversation, and what those conversations can look like. This week we are looking at the part of Amidah that talks about our avot v‘imahot, aka our forefathers and mothers. Let’s zoom in on Avraham! God is described as being…
Building Our Brit With Love
How can we make sure there’s room here for everyone to be who they are? How do I act in a way that lets people (both myself and everyone else) be who they are, with all their heart, mind, and strength? At Makom Community we value creating a space where we show love and feel loved. One way we do that is by creating a Brit, a two–way promise, that…
Symbols and Reminders: Embodying Torah
What does it mean to have Torah on our bodies? How do we do that if Torah is words? “Uk’shartam l’ot al yadecha v’hayu letotafot bein einecha. Tie it as a sign on your hand and as a reminder between your eyes”. This week we are exploring a Jewish practice of physically embodying Torah, not just speaking it! We are learning how to put on tefillin to experience how Jews throughout time have fulfilled this mitzvah (translated as “commandment” but at Makom Community we typically talk about mitzvot as “opportunities for connection”). Here is…
How do words of Torah change a home?
“Saying words of Torah in my house makes my house more welcoming, more like a home.” – A wise fourth grader. This week we continued exploring Shema, specifically the verse that says “speak [Torah] when you’re sitting in your house”. We unpacked what it means to say words of Torah in our houses and what that does for ourselves and our communities. Home is… A place with people you love. A place that you feel welcome. Somewhere…
“Teach Them To Your Children, THAT’S YOU GUYS!”
“Tell it to them, sing it to them, read it to them, have them hear the words of Torah, and then try to explain it, and talk about it, and see what they understand about it.” – A wise 4th grader. We’re studying the Shema this unit. We’re working through the V’ahavta paragraph, and zooming into the line, “Teach [Torah] to your children and speak of…
Amazing Mezuzot!
This week we are talking about and looking at mezuzot (click here for more info about mezuzot). What is on the inside? What is on the outside? We looked at a variety of mezuzah cases, and your kiddos had a lot to say about them! Check it out. First we talked about mezuzot in general. What are they, and what do we notice about the piece inside? It’s for the door. It’s a mezuzah! It…
We’ve Got Soul!
What is a soul? What do we do with it? What makes us who we are? We are looking at the part of V’havta that talks about loving God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our power, and we are unpacking what all of that really means. Check out what your soulful kiddos had to say! What’s a soul? I don’t…
What Is Love?
What is love? Is it a choice, or something that just happens, or maybe a bit of both? What does it mean to do something with all of our hearts? This week, we are looking at the first line of V’havta, and we are unpacking what it means to be commanded to love. Take a look and see what your kiddos…