MIVASERET MERCAZ
מבשרת מרכז
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Mercaz Academy scored points, blessed our food, and identified the best cookies. We built log cabins, the Beit Hamikdash, and electromagnets. Mercaz Academy traced our Jewish heritage, programmed robot bees, and analyzed the vessels of the Mishkan. Scroll down for a glimpse of the last week at Mercaz Academy...
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A Few of Our Class Bracha Bee Winners |
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Kitah Vav Bracha Bee winners |
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Kitah Hay Bracha Bee winners |
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Kitah Bet Bracha Bee winners |
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Not every class has held their Bracha Bee yet, but everyone is excited and getting ready for our Schoolwide Bracha Bee! Stay tuned for more bracha news coming soon...
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Science and Technology at Mercaz Is For Everyone! |
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Electromagnetic Experimentation in the Mercaz Science Room |
Science students were delighted to discover that a six-volt battery, some wire, and a bolt can add up to more than meets the eye. They knew that moving electricity creates a magnetic field, so they experimented with wrapping wire around a bolt and attaching it via alligator clips to the aforementioned six-bolt battery. They discovered that insulated wire didn’t work at all, but the bare copper wire was very effective, and students were able to pick up as many as 20 paper clips with the magnetized bolt.
The experiment was elevated to the next level when two fifth graders developed a hypothesis: they felt that keeping the wire closely and tightly wrapped around the bolt would produce a stronger magnetic field. When they tested their hypothesis, they were proved right. After their careful rewrapping of the wire, they were able to pick up as many as 70 paper clips, using both ends of the bolt. We congratulate these two young scientists for a successful upgrade to this experiment, and look forward to their future scientific discoveries.
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Nursery Bet Students Learning QR Codes |
Nursery Bet continued their coding lessons, recently focusing on QR codes and how they work. They accomplished this with the aid of Bee-Bots, adorable robots designed to teach very young students about sequencing, directionality, and problem-solving. The children of Nursery Bet often program the Bee-Bots to move around a grid on a mat to answer questions, work with simple numbers, and learn coding concepts like debugging.
Under the direction of Mrs. Last, our Director of Educational Technology, the Nursery Bet students used iPad scanners to read personalized QR codes. Each individual QR code opened a web page with a specific instruction to program a Bee-Bot to navigate to a certain color on the grid. Nursery Bet students activated the voice feature on the page to hear which color in the grid to visit, counted the number of squares to move the Bee-Bot in each direction to reach that color, and programmed the Bee-Bot accordingly. The activity generated lots of enthusiasm from the excited children, who love directing the Bee-Bots, and they were largely successful in programming them to reach their desired color.
As they learn coding, Nursery Bet students are confident and enabled in the world in which they live…as well as ready to assist the rest of us in our own struggles with technology.
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We Prepare for Presidents Day |
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First graders with collage cabin |
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Nursery Bet with Presidents Day flags |
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First grader with collage cabin |
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First Grade Learns Which Presidents Are Honored on Presidents Day |
First graders learned that Presidents Day is celebrated in honor of our first president, George Washington, and our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln. In addition to listening to stories, watching video, and reading Scholastic News, the class enjoyed making a wooden collage image of Abraham Lincoln's famous log cabin. These students wonder if you know that Abraham Lincoln sometimes stored papers in his stovepipe hat?
In keeping with the month of Adar, students noticed that George Washington’s three-cornered hat is shaped like a hamantasch. How seasonally appropriate!
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Mercaz Mustangs Complete Basketball Season |
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The Mercaz Mustangs have completed their second basketball season, and it was a perfect season, though perhaps not in the way they had planned. Against incredible odds, both the boys and girls teams grew in their skills, their sportsmanship, and their teamwork, more than doubling their points scored in the course of the season. Enjoy some highlights from their last games by clicking HERE.
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Kitah Daled Students Research Their Family Trees |
Kitah Daled students have just completed a microunit on family history to answer the question, what makes us Jewish? Students acted as family historians, gathering information and learning more about their Hebrew names and family origins. Then they made a three-generation family tree with Hebrew names, Hebrew birth dates, and places of birth.
The students of Kitah Daled learned many fascinating facts about their families, including the origins of their last names, stories of daring nighttime escapes from totalitarian countries, and why their parents had chosen their Hebrew names. The project was fun and educational, and gave them a new appreciation for the importance of maintaining the Jewish chain of tradition. They are grateful to their parents, who made sure that they are educated about their heritage by sending them to Mercaz Academy!
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Which Is the Best Cookie? Kindergarten Students Share Their Opinions |
Kindergarten students enjoyed a delicious kickoff to a new writing unit: opinion writing! The kindergarteners began by pondering a question bound to elicit very definite opinions.
“Which cookie is your favorite and why?” Mrs. Reinhardt wondered.
To ensure that their opinions were fact-based and fresh, Mrs. Reinhardt brought in two different kinds of cookies, Oreos and Chips Ahoy, and everyone sampled them extensively. Oreos were the favorite by a landslide, with most students approving of the creamy inside and the dual flavor produced by the chocolate cookie and vanilla cream. The vastly outnumbered Chips Ahoy contingent felt that their favorites were crisper, a feature cited by some Oreo fans as negative.
Students did a thorough job with their writing, successfully presenting the case for their favorites. The Kindergarten students loved the cookies, and are looking forward to further opportunities to express in writing how they feel about the world around them.
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Kitah Aleph Dishes Out Ice Cream With Their Ivrit |
Kitah Aleph students enjoyed practicing their colors in Hebrew with a delicious twist. Students read about Doda Leah, who offers ice cream in a wide variety of colors, and seized the opportunity to try it out for themselves. With the aid of Morah Shani’s toy ice cream shop kit, Kitah Aleph students took turns role-playing as Doda Leah and her eager customers, offering and ordering ice cream completely in Hebrew. Not only did they learn new vocabulary, they also had a chance to practice their colors in Hebrew. Kitah Aleph is well prepared for the next time the ice cream truck comes to visit! |
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Parshat Terumah: Mercaz Studies the Torah Portion |
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Kitah Gimel Creates Booklets for Parshiot Terumah and Tetzaveh |
Kitah Gimel has begun a special parsha project for the next two Torah portions of Terumah and Tetzaveh: a lift-the-flap presentation of the construction and contents of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). Students in Kitah Gimel learned about all the elements that went into making the Mishkan.
Kitah Gimel is first mastering the Hebrew vocabulary for the items collected from the people for the Mishkan. They are arranging and gluing the names and pictures of these items so that when the Hebrew word flap is lifted, a picture of the item is revealed, providing an instant visual translation. They will reverse this with the page for the klei haMishkan, the vessels of the Mishkan, and the construction materials. For these, a picture of the item is lifted to reveal their written explanations beneath.
For the cover of their booklet, students cut out a heart with the quotation, “B’livavi Mishkan evneh, In my heart, I will build a Mishkan,” from a song they learned by the renowned Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. Beneath the heart, students will write their ideas on how to bring Hashem’s presence into their own homes.
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Parshat Terumah Projects Are Everywhere!
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A kindergarten student choosing jewels for donation to the Mishkan
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Kitah Bet displaying the vessels of the Mishkan
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Not the Mishkan, but these kindergarteners jumped ahead in time to design and build the Beit Hamikdash (Temple)! |
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Monday, February 19
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No school: Presidents Day
Wednesday, February 21
- Grade 6 bowling trip with HANC
Monday, March 4-Wednesday, March 6
- Scholastic Book Fair (PTA)
Monday, March 11
- PTA-sponsored Schoolwide Pizza Lunch
- ECC-Grade 6 In-Person Parent Teacher Conferences
Tuesday, March 19
- ECC-Grade 6 Remote Parent Teacher Conferences
Thursday, March 21
- Regular dismissal, ECC-Grade 6: Ta'anit Esther
Sunday, March 24
- Purim
- Family-Friendly Megillah Reading and Breakfast Purim Seudah, ECC-Grade 6 (and friends)
Monday, April 8
- Grade 5 State Fair (note change in date)
Wednesday, April 17
Friday, April 19-Wednesday, May 1
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