Fifth Grade Stars

Last week was the first of four weeks in the Jewish year, in which we read two Parshiyot (Torah Portions) in the same week.  Justin and Liam decided to challenge the students to create the Mishkan (Tabernacle)  from play-dough.  First they summarized the Parshiyot and then gave the students the option to create their own Mishkan (a place where they feel close to God) or re-create the Mishkan from the Torah.  This really challenged the students to remember every thing they learned from the past five parshiot about building the Mishkan and use their own imagination.   Click on each photo to see a bigger image.

Today we skyped with students from the Tzafririm school in Hadera and their teacher Hagit.  It was 11:30 a.m. eastern time and 6:30 p.m. in Israel.  The Israeli students were having a Purim costume ball at school.  Some of the students’ costumes were a police woman, a princess from the middle ages, a scary clown and a girl dressed as Facebook.  We learned that they perform mitzvot such as prepare Mishloach Manot baskets for people in their community.  They asked us about our daily school schedule and if we were proud to attend a Jewish school,  which everyone answered yes!!!  The call ended with our Israeli friends singing their school anthem.

Ethan presented some the mishpatim (laws) in this Parsha in a short movie he filmed with his friends.  Next he challenged the students to apply the biblical laws to modern day situations.  This led to interesting discussions

about the consequences of breaking a

neighbor’s window or hacking into

someone’s email or Facebook account.

Our first ever retreat was so successful.  The following is Sarah S.’s description of the day:  Today fifth and sixth grade had the first ever, in-school retreat. First we prayed and went over our plans for the day. Next we did a digital scavenger hunt where you take pictures that had to do with the quotes your team was given. Then we all had to make a commercial for our school on the IPads. They might even go on the school blog! After that everyone had lunch and switched teams. We went outside with coach and did some games. The first game was that your team was given an egg and you had to use nature to package it, so it would not break when we dropped it off the monkey bars. My team used moss and leaves to create our package. Every team’s egg survived! On the second game we had to spell out a word in Hebrew about our experience today. My team spelled out מצוין which in Hebrew means excellent. We used this word because we had an excellent day.  The third game was with hula-hoops and the fouthwe played flag football. Lastly our school had an assembly about the Florida Lacrosse team. Their mascot is a bulldog. I had such a fun day.

Kitah hey and dalet celebrated Tu B’Shevat with a visit from JEA.  They learned all about current electricity and static electricity.  They also learned how to make a circuit, or pathway, for the electricity to flow through.  We all got quite a “thrill” after the flow of electricity passed through all of us.  The students learned the difference between non-renewable resources and renewable resources and how to conserve energy.