HSRS Announcements (Hodaahot הוֹדָוֹת) New Information Susan G Komen reached out to us, wanting us to help them create inspirational bracelets for their Hope Village. We are trying to make 100 bracelets!
Previous Sent Information
A few reminders:
The temperatures vary GREATLY in the buildings. It is always a smart idea to send a sweatshirt/sweater/jacket. Plus, we will be going outside most days/evenings.
We also encourage students to bring water bottles to each session plus Tzedakah.
Finally, with the number of students attending, it is important that you parking your car so we don't cause a Drake back-up at drop off and please exit your vehicle to pick up your child so we aren't having students roaming the parking lot.
Important Dates & Upcoming Events September 13- Shabbat Jr at 5:30pm at Har Shalom September 21- 6th/7th grade Havdalah from 5:30-7:30pm September 22- NO HSRS for 6th/7th grades October 2- NO HSRS, Erev Rosh Hashana October 16- NO HSRS, Sukkot October 19- S'mores Havdalah and SOCKtober Event from 6-7:30pm October 23- NO HSRS, Sukkot October 26- 7th grade-led Shabbat Serviceat 10:15am, oneg to follow October 27- NO HSRS for 7th grade October 27- B'nai Mitzvah Orientation for 6th grade families and those wanting a refresher from 12-1pm.
BBYO & Teen Things Teen of the Week! Each week, we will be recognizing one of our amazing teen volunteers who went above and beyond to help. We'd like to give a shout out to Bondi Herman! Bondi is our administrative madricha. She prepares and serves snacks, does clerical work, takes pictures, and helps everywhere with anything. Bondi was SOOOOO busy on Sunday, we didn't even get a picture to capture her AWESOMENESS!!
Upcoming BBYO Event The next event we have coming up is going to be our Northern Colorado Kickoff event with the Boulder chapter on September 15th from 3-6pm. We will be going to Bounce Empire which is in Lafayette Colorado. I have attached a video of what it looks like inside and it looks awesome! We will be helping to coordinating carpools so please reach out to me if you would like to be involved in a carpool, or would be willing to drive some teens! If you are driving teens feel free to come and hang out as well. Register here!!!
Synagogue & Community News
From Our Teachers Beresheet (Preschool) Morah Kyla will see you in November!!
Kitah Gan (Kindergarten) from Morah JoJo We had a lot to do, in so little time. We started off the day with Tzedakah and extra shekels for our enthusiastic Shira participants. Then we opened our brand new Hebrew books! Everyone took time to decorate the cover of their books, making them each unique. Then we had our first Hebrew lesson, we learned about the quietist letter in the Aleph-Bet. The kids wrote lines and lines of Aleph, both in their book and on the whiteboard. We ended Hebrew with some Aleph-Bet yoga. After a quick snack break, the class made friendship bracelets for anyone struggling with their health. Finally, we went back to the room for our lesson about the mezuzah. We talked about what it means to have Shalom Bayit and how we want our bedrooms to also have peace and relaxation. The kids decorated their own mezuzahs and we read the Shema. They will all have beautiful mezuzahs for their bedroom doors next week!
Kitah Alef (First Grade) from Morah Laura We had another fun day in Kita Aleph. We started out by learning some new tunes to some of our old favorites during Shira. The students love singing, along to the melodies. Once back in our classroom, the students returns their library books and we recorded them for prizes from Judy. If your child reads additional Jewish themed books at home that are not Har Shalom library books, please send a note with them or send me an email. Our lesson today was about the Torah. We talked about how Torah is filled with many Jewish stories, rules, and mitzvot. Our three centers were a Jewish holiday puzzle, the letter Bet and each student began to build their own Torah. We will add pictures from each Torah story that we read into our personal Torahs. Finally, we reviewed aleph and bet and the students wanted to know about the vowels that make the aleph have sound. We introduced two different ones to the students did a great job, remembering them. We sing a few songs and then began introducing the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. We talked about many things that we couldn’t do two years ago but that we could do now and even things that we couldn’t do a few weeks ago that we have gotten better at. Our discussion about Rosh Hashanah will continue.
Kitah Bet (Second Grade) from Morah Anne Hello Kita Bet families! Sunday was a world-wind of a day, with the morning flying by. After shira, we started our weekly Hebrew lesson. Kita bet will be learning to read very basic Hebrew this year but we started out with letter review. We did discuss the basics of reading-right to left, back to front and using vowels. We learned to sound out and read the word “Shabbat”. It”s a start! 😃 We also discussed the Torah and briefly about its importance to our religion. We discussed how to “dress” the Torah and specific pieces we could find on most Torahs. We ended the morning constructing our own mini Torahs and practicing our alef bet. We were unable to finish the project but will pick up where we left off next week. I hope you all have an amazing week!
Kitah Gimmel (Third Grade) from Morah Robin Wednesday- We reviewed the Hebrew letters we learned last Wednesday - Shin, Bet, and Tov, and the vowel, Ah. We then continued in our Hebrew workbooks and completed Lesson One. After a short break inside, we listed the five books of the Torah and their meanings, then read “Torah is the Best Merchandise” which illustrates how special the Torah is to Jewish people. We finished by discussing that the book of Leviticus in the Torah will be our focus this year in Kitah Gimmel. Leviticus is a book about sacrifices in the ancient Temple and is filled with a multitude of laws that are still observed today.
Sunday- We reviewed Lesson 1 and started Lesson 2 in our Hebrew workbooks, learning two more letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We then split the class into 3 teams, competing to pronounce made up Hebrew words. Very competitive students we have! 😊 After a short break outside, we started Lesson 1 of the Torah portion of our Chai curriculum – Leviticus. We discussed how to be Kadosh (holy) which brings us closer to G-d. Next, the students colored paper dolls resembling themselves then wrote “I am Kadosh” on them. These beautifully illustrated paper dolls are hung on the walls outside our classroom for display.
Kitah Dalet (Fourth Grade) from Morah Merav Wednesday- We continue our work with the Aleph Bet. We are working on recognizing the letters out of order now. We also keep working on our Hebrew numbers. We had time to color while we connect with one another. Everyone had a chance to share something with the class, and to listen to each other.
Sunday- After shira and collecting Tzedakah we began working on our numbers in Hebrew. We continue working on our Aleph Bets. Everyone has a chance of earning shekels by reading our Aleph Bet Board. The students that have this mastered are challenged with reading it backwards. We all started making our own Aleph Bet flash cards. We will continue working on these in class- Eventually bringing them home to practice. We added some agreements to our Class Brit. We started a list of questions for Rabbi in anticipation of her visit to our kitah next Sunday. We are all excited to have her join us. It was a great day at Har Shalom and our time together flies by! Thank you so much to our awesome Madricha, Zelda for her assistance in class.
Kitah Hay (Fifth Grade) Wednesday from Morah Lauren- Kita Hay islearning prepositions. We employed our class hatool (cat) and kelev (dog) for demonstrations. We are also working on Havdalah blessings.
Wednesday from Morah Sophie- We learned about some prophets in specific through interviews. The students ask how Samuel and Ezekiel became a prophet, why they think they were a successful prophet, what was difficult about being a prophet, and what the best part about being a prophet was. Then we discussed what their positive traits were.
Sunday from Morah Lauren- Kita Hay did a great job with tough questions and answers in Hebrew. We are still working on our projects to decorate our room. The first one is our names in Hebrew for the walls. Shalom all-looking forward to Wednesday.
Sunday from Morah Sophie- We started the day with shira, then the students got to visit with my puppy to support the learning of the words hatool (cat) and kelev (dog)! After, we made advertisements looking for people wanting to be prophets. They included traits necessary, job descriptions, and salaries.
Kitah Vav (Sixth Grade) Wednesday from Safranit Judy- This is Judy ha'safranit (the Library Director), and I subbed for Kita Vav again on Wednesday evening. We have a new student!! Brucha ha'ba'ah (welcome!) to Milly! It's great to have you in our class. My Hebrew group worked in our Hebrew workbooks and worked on one, two, three, four and five syllable words. We also worked on pronouncing words as entire words, rather than syllable by syllable. Once the group was all together we played a few rounds of "telephone" in Hebrew, with hilarious results! We had our break in the sanctuary due to the rain and played musical chairs with the 5th grade class using Israeli music. After break, we made brucha ha'ba'ah cards for our regular teacher Aviva, who will be starting soon. The students are eager to meet her!
Sunday from Morah Aviva- For Hebrew, we split into two groups each session. My group worked on finding the word that doesn't belong in the hebrew workbooks while the rest of the class was working with Tefillah Deb (see below) . Then as a class, we played Twister in hebrew and reviewed colors in hebrew. After recess, I read the students' cards for me and lead an activity where we decorated sneakers that depicted our hobbies to get to know each other. Then we presented them to the class and also worked on a class playlist.
Kitah Zayin (Seventh Grade) Wednesday from Rabbi Finestone- During the first half of class, we looked at the structure of the Shabbat morning service, and talked about the Hebrew and English names of all the objects on the Bimah. We then had a good discussion about the Torah scroll itself, the five books, and what is contained in each. We had some fun solving riddles during break. During the second half of class, we looked at an ethical dilemma of someone asking for money, but you are not sure whether they are genuinely in need or a fake. We went through different scenarios, and then read the passages of Jewish law which instruct us to give to everyone who is in need, even if we suspect they are fake. One always must give the person the benefit of the doubt, and one must always give with kindness and a happy demeanor.
Sunday from Morah Michelle- Kitah Zayin tie-dyed shirts! Students are encouraged to wear their shirts to class next week so that we can sign shirts. Students will also earn 5 shekels every time they wear their shirt to school on SUNDAY. The rest of class was spent learning about Yiddish. Students sorted Yiddish words with their definitions. We discovered that a lot of students already knew some common Yiddish words like, shlep, nosh, and klutz. Yiddish is more closely aligned with German, but is written using the Hebrew alphabet, and is over 1,000 years old. The world had 11 million Yiddish speakers pre WWII but there are now only 600,000 Yiddish speakers in the world. We ended class by singing Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes in Yiddish. See everyone next week!
Tie- Dye Instructions
Keep in a warm spot for at least 6 hrs. For best results, wait for 24 hrs.
Rinse under cold water WITH rubber bands on for a little bit. Take your time.
Remove rubber bands.
Rinse under luke-warm water until water runs clear.
Wash in the washing machine separately from other clothes. Do this a couple of times before washing with other clothes.
From Our Specials News from the Sifriyah (Library) Reading Challenge: The Reading Challenge is off to a great start! Students have already started receiving prizes. Way to go!! Remember, Har Shalom books, PJ Library and PJ Our Way, school and public library books count, as long as they have some kind of Jewish content. For non Har Shalom books, the student just needs to tell me what book they read for it to count.
Storytime: This year's theme is Jewish American history. We'll cover eras from pre-colonial through modern, and we'll start off later this month with the immigrant era from 1880-1920. The foyer bookcase and classroom bookracks will be stocked with amazing immigrant era stories and they would be a great way for your student to earn Reading Challenge prizes! Watch the HSRS Facebook page starting next week for some examples and suggestions!
News from Shira (Sunday Morning Song Session) From Tefillah Deb- I’m covering for Josh during September! We sang Bim Bam, sang and danced to Heveynu Shalom Alechem, learned Shalom Chaverim in Hebrew and English, and sang Henay Ma Tov to 3 different melodies! The kids did great!!
News from Tefillah (Wednesday Evening Prayer Session) In addition to leading Tefillah, Tefillah Deb also supports a beginning Hebrew group for a chaverim (friends) who are new to Har Shalom. This week, we reviewed the letters Bet and Resh, along with several vowel sounds, and introduced the chaf and final chaf. The kids are making solid progress!
