ECC Students Celebrate Erev Shabbat With Grandparents, Special Someones

Younger students got their day in the sun when they welcomed their grandparents and “special someones” to an Erev Shabbat event last week.

Students in Nursery Aleph, Nursery Bet, and Kindergarten greeted these most special people with hugs and kisses in the cafeteria, decorated for the Shabbat celebration. The program opened with a Shabbat story read by Morah Jo Mlotok, Director of the Early Childhood Center and Morah of Nursery Bet.

Working with their visitors, the little ones filled jars with layers of colored sand, which were then topped with aluminum candle holders to create beautiful working candlesticks. The craft was absorbing and fun for both children and “special someones,” and provided a welcome opportunity to spend some quality time together at school.

The young students with their teachers then gathered by grade at beautifully appointed Shabbat tables at the front of the auditorium , and demonstrated their facility with the rituals and brachot of welcoming Shabbat. The girls recited the bracha welcoming Shabbat over merrily flickering (teacher-lit!) candles, while the boys recited the bracha on individual cups of grape juice for the kiddush. Then students rushed back to their grandparents and “special someones” to enjoy a delicious snack of cookies, fruit, and challah, provided by the always-thoughtful PTA. The group then sang Shabbat songs together, with music teacher Craig Resmovits accompanying them on keyboards.

After many goodbye hugs and kisses, the visitors left Mercaz Academy. Students returned to their classrooms, happy to have shared crafts, cookies, and a glimpse of their accomplishments at school with the people who mean the most to them–all in the spirit of Shabbat.

Sixth Graders Hack Chanukah at CIJE Chanukah Pinball Hackathon

Mercaz Academy sixth graders helped transform the gym at North Shore Hebrew Academy High School into a dazzling Chanukah-themed arcade of Jewish ingenuity at the CIJE Chanukah Pinball Hackathon. Fielding four teams of sixth graders, Mercaz joined other schools from Long Island and Westchester for preparatory workshops. These included workshops on storyboarding and game design; game elements like bumpers, ramps, and pits; and how to add light, sound, and motion with electronic circuitry. 

After spending the morning on preparation, the teams had two hours to come up with ideas and bring them to life. Students bustled to and fro, sketching designs, hot-gluing ramps and chanukiot, and introducing circuitry to make bumpers spin, flash, and dance. Two Mercaz teams incorporated spinning dreidels into their games; one team painstakingly bedazzled their pinball machine in an illustration of Chanukah’s status as the Festival of Lights. Mercaz Academy’s Director of Technology, Mrs. Lynda Last, arranged and chaperoned the trip, and she reported that the sixth graders were so absorbed in their projects that she had difficulty getting them to stop long enough to eat.

When the two hours were complete, students were free to move from station to station, playing each other’s games and voting on the best machines. Mercaz Academy pinball machines received many compliments from students and from CIJE advisors on the floor, and the Mercaz sixth graders enjoyed meeting fellow engineering enthusiasts from the other schools and playing pinball.

The four sixth-grade teams brought their pinball machines back to school, where younger students await the arrival of Chanukah for their opportunity to play them and seize their chance at pinball wizardry. 

All of the Mercaz Hackathon participants agreed that it was a festive celebration of creativity, engineering, Jewish heritage, and the incredible potential of sixth-grade minds.

Kitah Daled Work Cycle Allows Students to Own Their Torah Learning

The first hour of Kitah Daled’s daily Torah study does not look anything like a standard classroom. The shelf running the length of the classroom beneath the windows holds a line of trays, each filled with a small item or two: a little box of what seems to be puzzle pieces, a glass jar full of Hebrew letters, a bowl full of seemingly random numbers and sentence fragments. Each student, guided by a personalized reference card, selects a tray and moves purposefully towards one of the room’s round tables. There, singly or in pairs, they work on their selections with quiet focus.

This hour is dedicated to the “work cycle,” designed to build skills in Hebrew reading fluency, vocabulary, and general Judaic knowledge. Using work cycles, students engage in completely individualized learning, using various manipulative activities. Students might select puzzle piece pairs to fit together standard Hebrew script letters with the corresponding letters in Rashi script, or with the gematria (numerical value). With the aid of these tools, the class has already mastered 44 key events in Jewish history on their class timeline, creating a working map of Jewish history which will allow them to place what they learn into the correct context. The random-looking numbers and sentence fragments are actually a complex method designed to help students identify the main event in each chapter of Bereisheet. Students working in pairs are committing to memory shorashim, the three-letter roots of Hebrew words, as well as high frequency words.

The work cycle is based on Rabbi Jonathan Rietti’s “Al Pi Darko” teaching strategies and Montessori methodology. “Al Pi Darko” refers to the charge in Mishlei to “teach each child according to his own way.” Morah Tessler explains, “Because it’s self-directed, the work cycle encourages students to take ownership of their learning, which fosters both focus and depth of understanding.”

How Does Light Pass Through Common Classroom Items? Second Grade Finds Out

Heat and light have been topics of analysis in the second grade, now that we’re well into December and it seems we have so much less of both. Students already had been exploring sources of heat and light, and learning about the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales to measure heat. The second grade has also been investigating conduction, studying which materials best block heat or allow heat to pass through.

Having learned of the connection between heat and light, the second grade’s attention now has turned to light. How does light pass (or not) through material? They have learned how to sort items into one of three categories: transparent, translucent, and opaque. A math workbook, for example, is opaque, and no light passes through it. Anyone looking at the math workbook would not be able to see the pencil hidden behind it. However, the class discovered that a student’s flower-shaped multicolored marker is translucent; with some light passing through the colorful petals, which allows students to faintly see the individual markers embedded in each petal. In contrast, the bottle of hand sanitizer on Mrs. Kirschenbaum’s desk is transparent, and all light passes easily through it; anything inside, even an air bubble in the hand sanitizer, is clearly visible. 

Next question on the agenda: How does light pass through a prism? We can’t wait to hear about the light-shattering results…

Kitah Aleph Discovers Limitations, Cedes Biology to Hashem

Every day, when Kitah Aleph students recite “Asher Yatzar,” they thank Hashem for making their bodies work properly–but last week, they developed a newfound appreciation for the complexity of the job.

Students followed Hashem’s recipe for making Adam HaRishon, the first man, making only the small substitution of Play-Doh for the dust of the earth. It sounded like an easy project, but the creators in Kitah Aleph realized that they were unable to duplicate Hashem’s results. Their people looked cute, but the complex systems to support life were simply beyond their ability. The little figurines, they realized, could never live without Hashem and His intricate and amazing work.

However, they enjoyed their attempts a great deal, and are now able to recite “Asher Yatzar” with even more sincerity than they did before. 

Parshat Vayishlach: Bal Tashchit in the GrowTorah Garden

This week’s time in the GrowTorah garden opened with a discussion about this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach. Students wondered why Yaakov was returning to Eretz Yisrael and heading towards potential conflict with his brother, and then backtracked across the river. Farmer Menuchah cited Rashi, who explains that Yaakov returned for some pachim ketanim, small jars. This action teaches us an important mitzvah: bal tashchit, not to be wasteful. From Yaakov’s actions, we learn the importance of appreciating and making use of the resources we have.

In the garden, students observed how the cold weather has affected the plants. They noticed that, while some plants thrived in the cold, others were wilted and brown. The fennel plants seemed dead and without value, but students found that there were fennel seeds where the blossoms had been in warmer weather. Mindful of Yaakov’s lesson and practicing bal tashchit, students collected the seeds to save for planting in the spring. Plants that had no seeds to preserve were composted, ensuring once again that nothing went to waste. 

The GrowTorah garden will now lie dormant through the cold winter months, but the mitzvot learned there will keep the connection warm until lessons in the garden recommence in the spring.