Rosh Hashanah Craft

We made Simanim serving trays for Rosh Hashanah. Here is what the Students produced:

Memory Challenge

Today, I questioned the Student's abilities to multitask while playing on their iPad/IPhone. One student related that they can multitask, no problem, when using technology. I challenged them to a memory task of the "Camping Trip" game to see if they can remember items in order while using their devices. In the end Shira and Emuna tied for first place, but everyone did pretty good. Here is the list of all the items those two memorized. I was impressed.

I am going on a camping trip and I am bringing my:

Walking Stick

IPad

Glasses

S'mores

Siddur

Watermelon

Flashlight

Stinky Cheese

House

Lip Gloss

Colouring Sheets

Doughnuts

Sun Screen

Dog

Worlds Biggest Ear Wax Collection

Hot Dog

Watch

Water Bottle

Poster

Chips

Hat

Ball 

Sweat Shirt

Tikkun Olam Project

Here are some beautiful pictures from our recent Daffodil Planting excursion. We took part in the planting of 600 daffodils in remembrance of the 1.5 million children who were sadly killed in the Holocaust. We were very proud to be a part of this project and hope to see them blossoming in the spring.

APPLE PICKING TRIP

Words are useless when the pictures tell the story so well!

Teshuvah, Tefillah U'Tzedaka

Today at the CLC Homeschool we spoke about three new BIG Rosh Hashanah themes: Teshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedaka.

First, we spoke about what we already knew about these three topics.
Second, we got into groups of two and took letters of the Aleph-Bet to spell out one of the words.

Third, we took random Lego pieces and created our own vision of what our word meant. Unfortunately the Students broke theirs apart before Rabbi B had a chance to take a picture. The group who worked on Teshuvah made a shul, complete with aron kodesh, benches and mechitza. Their vision was that Teshuvah was a communal process that is done as a community. The seats were long rows where each group sat together to work on their past and towards their future.
The Tefillah group had a similar vision of a shul where there was a ramp going up signifying the process of davening as slow and steady. As well, there was a balancing long Lego piece signifying the balance we all must to when praying to not think about mundane matters. There was also a piece that had an eye on it signifying that H" is always watching us and we should "Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed" - know before Who we stand.
The Tzedaka group made a tzedaka box that reached towards the heaven, signifying the holy act of giving money to people less fortunate.

Lastly we looked in the machzor to see where these themes, and previously discussed themes like shofar, din (judgement), malchiyot (kingship) and zichronot (remembrances), came up.

SEFER HAMITZVOS AND SCIENCE

In the afternoon group, we have been discussing Solar science and Light science.
We learned how light can be either reflected, refracted or absorbed. In the refraction discussion, I told the Students that natural visible sunlight was called white light and that this white light contained all the visible spectrum of colours (ROYGBIV). The Students were not sold. They retorted with a good source that when we colour all the colours together on a paper it turns black, not white. I agreed that this was how ink colours work, but light behaves differently, so we experimented.

I hope to bring a prism in to show them a real rainbow of colours as white light is refracted, but for now we did it with a paper experiment. We split a circle of paper into eight segments and coloured each segment a different colour of the rainbow spectrum. Then we mounted them on cardboard and spun them around very fast to see how the colours would mix when our eyes tried to follow the wheel.

Our first experiment was with dark marker colours.

As you can see, the colours were too dark and we kept getting a yellow, or in one case purple, wheel. 

Next we tried pencil crayons. We figured the colours of a rainbow were not that dark, and more lighter colours. 

The result of our next trial was much better: a white wheel. The colours mixed together and made white, proving that white light really can contain all the colours and still be white. 

In addition: One Student made a wonderful connection to the behaviours of light and us, the Jewish people. Just like light can be Reflected and Absorbed, so too can Torah work the same way. As we know, Torah is called Ohr (Light) and this too is the name of the Alter Rebbe's sefer: Torah Ohr. We, as Jews, can absorb the teachings of the Torah to give us more knowledge and change our kiddos for the better. As well, we can reflect the light of the Torah outward to the world making kiddushei Hashem, performing mitzvos and doing mivtzoim. These are just some of the reasons we feel Torah is called light. 

TOMORROW MORNING: SHOFAR DEMONSTRATION