October 3, 2008 Tishrei 4, 5768 Dear Parents, Shannah tovah to you and yours! May these days between now and Yom Kippur bring you quality time for reflection and ìdetermined rejoicing!î As this was a very short week of school we essentially caught up on calendar work, shared Taschlich, and did various reading and shared holiday happenings. We also wrote thank you notes to Amanda Bassich, our wonderful new friend who is also the harpist whom we visited last week. We also wrote the ìGanî Class of Temple Beth El. We have a wonderful ongoing correspondence with them. We wrote to say ìtodah rabbah,î /thank you as they wrote us a beautiful note and gave us a delicious bag of apples. Our students also had a discussion about awe during Jodiís calendar time. This brought up a discussion of HaShem and how we think about God. Chaya Necha then at one point exclaimed that we think about G-d ìlike a whole lot of hearts, like a big heart, like love.î This was followed up with a latter discussion about the Days of Awe and our strong relationship with HaShem. Students finished this discussion with a comparison and contrast of various days in the month of September and the high and low temperatures. This past Kabbalat Shabbat we enjoyed a round challah in honor of the New Year and stayed in a festive mood. We are enjoying fall and looking forward to our continued good cheer with the holidays. We are grateful for many blessings and especially for the blessing of some of our students remembering to bring tzeddekah. While we do collect lose change for the poor during the week, we request that the children bring in some change specifically on Shabbat to help us perform the mitzvah of taking care of others. We applaud those who are remembering to do so. We also applaud the whole class for surpassing their first reading goal. They collectively read over 500 minutes! Yashar koach K/1! Next week we will be going to the library on Monday, October 6. We will be going in the afternoon. In order for us to be able to go we will need your childís car seat. Please remember to drop it off that Monday morning. Thank you in advance for your help in this matter. Presently we still need your help with ìfreeî items. If you can donate any toilet tissue rolls, paper toweling rolls, old magazines, shoe boxes, and baby wipes containers we would be most appreciative. We use these items for various art projects. At this time we send ìrefuah shlamaî blessings to Leslie Greenspan who has recently undergone various eye surgeries. We wish her a complete healing so that the brightness of the world shines through continuously. Remember, do feel free to contact us if you need to and until next timeÖ have a sweet Shabbat. Kol tuv, Meisha and Jodi