Temple Beth Tikvah Religious School: Confirmation Class in NYC!

The Rabbi's Confirmation class is in New York City today, touring, learning and EATING!!! We look forward to hearing about their trip once they return, but for now, take a look on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/templebethtikvahct for more pictures!

Those of us that stayed in Madison at TBT had a busy and fun morning too! (Though we didn't get as much yummy food!)

Our first graders spent much of the day talking about Shabbat and learning the special words and prayers that we use on Shabbat, such as the prayer over the challah, wine and candles. Ask your first grader to talk about challah, they practiced getting their pronunciation just right!!! They also visited the library to listen to the story "It's Challah Time" by Latifa Berry Kropf.

The second graders heard the Torah portion from this past Shabbat, Breashit, the Creation Story. They began to illustrate each of the different days of creation. As we all know, at the end of creation, there was a day of rest, Shabbat. The second graders learned about the letter shin that starts the word Shabbat when they worked on their Hebrew for the week. They used their brand new Hebrew books to practice writing their shins and then colored a paper to help them with the vowel sounds in Hebrew.

Third and fourth graders reviewed the books of the Torah (in English and Hebrew), practiced writing some of their Hebrew letters and learned 10 new Hebrew words! The easiest one to remember started with the zayin. Ask your third or fourth grader what word that was! Like many of the other classes, they talked about the creation story and had a very thoughtful discussion about the Garden of Eden and both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. They also learned two additional words using the letters they have reviewed. All of the kids in this class know how to say and write "Dad" and "Fish" in Hebrew! Ask them how!

Fifth graders are excited to begin working on the life cycle curriculum and Mr. Singer began to introduce the kids to the topics they will cover as they work through the book. Fifth graders also collected Tzedakah and played a game in class to review the Holidays.

Sixth graders were very enthusiastic about practicing their Hebrew cursive/script writing, and played a game to challenge themselves! For a few minutes of fun, they played Four corners using the Hebrew words for each of the numbers. The students will have a quiz on the letters aleph through lamed in cursive next Sunday.

Seventh graders were kind enough to lead our Tefilah service at the end of the day and did a beautiful job. I entered their classroom while they were practicing and was so pleased to hear how well they sang and how beautiful they sounded! They kept busy by reading the modern translation of the Creation story in the Chumash and discussing the story. Right before Tefilah, the students were able to get creative and make their own stained "glass" windows. Their designs included Israeli flags, kiddush cups, rainbows that signaled the end of Noah's 40 days of rain, and burning bushes. Seventh grade homework is to practice the Friday Night Kiddush and review the V'Ahavta if they need to redo their quiz.