Mercaz Academy Flies to Israel for Tu B'Shevat

Mercaz Academy–usually located in Plainview, New York–once again “flew to Israel” for Tu B’Shevat and, as always, the flight was fast (and free).

Students entered the main hallway to find it transformed into an airplane, with plenty of first-class seats, a surprisingly swift-moving security line (wands only, no scanners required), and an El-Al Airlines flight safety video playing on screen. After boarding, flight attendants moved carts up the aisle offering snacks to the passengers as they enjoyed a Hebrew language in-flight video about the Machne Yehuda shuk, starring a former Mercaz Academy student now living in Israel. After a flight that seemed to take only minutes, the plane was waved to a landing by airport personnel and the student passengers disembarked, lining up at the airport kaspomat (ATM) to change their money into shekalim. 

Trees bearing figs and pomegranates seemed to welcome the students to Israel as they entered the shuk, where numerous signs advised that only Ivrit would be spoken. Israeli vendors–sixth graders paired with Hebrew-speaking PTA members–shouted to attract customers as the remaining students wandered the narrow “streets,” buying pickles and “chips” (or as they’re called in Plainview, french fries), olives (to represent the seven Israeli species), clementines, dried fruit, Israeli juices, and Bissli. The students negotiated prices, counted change, and enjoyed the tasty produce of Israel. Students with an artistic bent also stopped at a booth to draw leaves to add to the fruit trees lining the street.

Kitah Gimel Asks: How Are We Like Trees of the Field?

Kitah Gimel drew some meaningful connections between Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year for trees, and personal spiritual growth. In a deep analysis of the famous metaphor from Devarim 20:19, which compares people to "trees of the field," the students learned that emunah (faith) protects them like a tree’s protective bark, while its leaves and fruit represent the Jewish people’s study of Torah and performance of mitzvot. Pondering how to extend the metaphor to include the natural growth of the tree, the class noticed that, like trees, they are constantly growing, but their growth is spiritual as well as physical.

The students of Kitah Gimel used this inspirational discussion to create three-dimensional paper pomegranates with personal reflections written in Hebrew. Each student wrote how he or she is like a tree, and which mitzvot are their favorites to strengthen spiritual growth. This powerful combination of Torah analysis, creative expression, and hands-on learning produced a beautiful hallway pomegranate tree, ready to inspire all passers-by with its fruit.

George Washington Plus Algorithms Equals Race Car Fun in Second Grade

In honor of Presidents' Day, second grade students read ...If You Grew Up With George Washington by Ruth Belov Gross, absorbing information about the first president's life and times. Mrs. Kirschenbaum wrote a series of questions and Mrs. Last created eight “challenge sheets” to test the students’ reading comprehension by way of several "indi" robot cars. 

Students worked in teams to complete the various challenge sheets. These contained several multiple-choice questions on the book’s content, with each possible answer printed on a different color. Each selected answer was translated by each team to a corresponding color to match one of the car’s rainbow of silicone mats. Laid out to form a path, these mats direct the color-sensing “indi” robot car to go, stop, turn right or left, angle away, or even spin in a circle. Thus, students had to answer the questions about George Washington correctly to create a viable path for their robot car. The process was self-checking: correct answers created a functional path for the car to follow, while incorrect answers would send the car veering off course. 

George Washington himself might not have recognized the enthusiastic second graders busily programming robot cars as participating in a reading comprehension assessment, but even he would acknowledge that they knew all about him–and seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Nursery Bet Takes Pencil in Hand...

In an exciting milestone for Nursery Bet, the four-year-old students have begun using pencils for the first time. Following the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum, these young learners spent the first semester reviewing and mastering capital letters, which has built a strong foundation for their literacy skills. Now they have advanced to what they enthusiastically call "real writing," using pencils and practicing their letters in smaller spaces on paper – a significant step in their fine motor development.

Adding to their sense of accomplishment, the students are looking forward to another "first" with the introduction of homework assignments next week. These new responsibilities and achievements have instilled a profound sense of pride in the Nursery Bet students, who are delighting in their growth as "big kids" in the Mercaz Academy school community.

Delicious Lab Experiment Demonstrates Plate Tectonics

Sixth grade students' mouths may have been watering a bit during last week's earth science lab. Using graham crackers and whipped cream, students created working models that demonstrated how tectonic plates interact on the Earth's surface.

Each student team spread a thick layer of whipped cream on a paper plate divided into quadrants to represent the Earth's upper mantle, the soft layer beneath the tectonic plates. Appropriately, the crust of the earth was represented by pieces of graham crackers. Through careful manipulation, students observed how plates collide in convergent boundaries, with one plate sliding beneath another or both pushing upward to form mountains. When pulled apart to show divergent boundaries, students watched as whipped cream rose up between the separating crackers, mimicking how magma fills gaps between spreading plates in nature. Moving the crackers in different directions along a vertical axis resulted in transform boundaries, which spread the whipped cream as the crackers scraped past each other.



Though simple, the model helped students visualize these complex geological processes in an engaging way…made even more memorable by the graham-cracker-and-whipped-cream snacks they enjoyed afterwards.

Toddlers Learn Parshat Mishpatim: Meat or Milk?

Mercaz Toddlers are very well-versed in one of Parshat Mishpatim’s many laws–the prohibition against mixing meat and milk. In fact, at lunchtime, students know that those with dairy lunches and those with meat lunches sit at different tables to be sure to keep these foods separated. But this week, they enjoyed an additional hands-on lesson about this law, mixing lots of fun into their Torah learning. 

Morah Tikva presented her students with an assortment of plastic food from the class toy kitchen, including a hotdog, a chicken, and a pizza. Each student had to choose whether the food item belonged on the “meat” mat or the “dairy” mat, and the toddlers carefully examined each plastic food item before deciding where it belonged. The exercise incorporated sorting, tactile learning, repetition, and logic, and the youngest Mercaz students had a great time with this exciting parsha game.