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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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:…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…