September 26, 2008 Elul 26, 5768 Dear Parents, Week #4 brings holiday cheer as we approach Rosh HaShannah. Our prayers here at Madison Jewish Community Day School are that you and yours have a delightful delicious holiday season filled with learning, laughter and love. We look forward to many years together within which we can help ìgrowî wonderful Jewish students. As it is a time of preparation and also of forgiveness during this New Year 5769 season, we want to extend our sincere apology to Lianna for leaving off her idea about HaShem. Lianna, last week, expressed the following thought about HaShem, ìYou are the Shoemaker and we are the shoes.î This early attempt at poetry was successfully built upon during general studies. This week students wrote their first acrostic poems incorporating their science studies about seasons and weather. They also incorporated some art as they did leaf rubbings for their fall poems. They extended their knowledge about the season as they learned about hibernation, migration, and harvest fruits. They learned about anemometers and wind speed and have been recording the various winds speed data. This is in addition to their graphing the daily temperatures and making predictions and drawing conclusions about weather conditions. All of this relates to the language of mathematics as students count, compare, and construct math sentences that relate to this topic and their calendar work. Math sentences appeared as students listened and worked with the read aloud, Math Fables, by Greg Tang. Counting and comparing further commence as students record how many minutes they read at home. At the conclusion of 500 minutes students will have a surprise. Additionally students are working on nouns and working at remembering when to capitalize a proper noun when writing various answers. They are also working on using proper punctuation as they create complete thoughts. Many of these complete thoughts were written this past week in various holiday cards and responses. Lists of nouns and verbs also demonstrate that students are beginning to understand basic concepts of grammar. One noun that received a lot of attention was the word compass. The students created one out of a sewing needle, magnet and cork. The compass was placed in a container of water and NORTH was found by our students! During Hebrew/Judaic Studies we happily worked on Rosh HaShannah projects. From making bírachot/blessings/cards for others, to tasting dívash/honey, to learning about the birthday of the world and hearing the story of Jonah, we are readying ourselves for 5769! We are also continuing to learn various New Year liturgies such as the chorus for Avineu Malkanu and Víal Kulam. Our Hebrew continues to grow as we work with the Tal Am High Holiday book. It teaches basic vocabulary, songs, and sight vocabulary recognition as well as phonetic reading of specific letters. It is amazing how receptive our students are to this program. They are learning a great deal via song as our students love to hear the CDís playing quietly in the background while they do various other work. This week we spoke about the aleph words ohav and ochel ( love and eat). We discovered that we love to eat apples and honey. Every Shabbat we celebrate the entering of Shabbat with a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony. Part of this ceremony includes collecting tzeddekah. While we do collect any 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. This past Kabbalat Shabbat was a tad shorter because prior to our celebration we went to Amanda Bassichís home to hear a Harp Concert. This neighborhood musician donated her time and her home for our students to hear some wonderful music. We look forward to seeing her again when she hopefully comes to visit us here for one of our special Shabbat celebrations. Presently we 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. Todah rabbah goes to Esther Poler for bringing in apples for us to enjoy. Our thanks too go to the Ablove Family for their donation of various science instruments. We thank the Milun Family for their candy donation which is gluten free. As one of our students needs gluten free products this gift was especially appreciated. Remember, do feel free to contact us if you need to and until next timeÖ have a sweet Shabbat. Kol tuv, Meisha and Jodi