Ganon Aleph Celebrates Yom Yerushalayim

To celebrate Yom Yerushalayim on Wednesday, the children in Ganon Aleph enjoyed a barbecue along with the rest of the school.  Due to the inclement weather, the barbecue was held indoors.  Back in our classroom, we enjoyed a delicious cake for dessert in the shape of the Israeli flag.  We added Hallel to our tefillah, sang some songs about Yerushalayim with Morah Roberta, and talked a little about the history of Yerushalayim.  The children learned that after the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed, we lost Yerushalayim for a very long time, until we won her back on the 28th of Iyar in 1967.  This is the date we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim because we are so happy to have her back!  After learning that the Kotel is the only remainder of all the walls which surrounded the Beit Hamikdash, we created a Kotel for our classroom towards which the children face every day when we daven.  They also made their own "Mizrach" pictures to hang at home as a reminder of which direction to face when they daven!

Yom Yerushalayim in Gan Gimmel!!

What an amazing Yom Yerushalayim we had in Gan Gimmel! The rain did not stop us for one minute. We started the day with Tefillah and sang Hallel in honor of this special day. We faced mizrach while we davened and the children remembered that this is the direction where the Kotel is in Yerushalayim. We watched a short video that was filmed this morning and sent from a friend of the morot who lives in the Old City of Yerushalayim overlooking the kotel. It depicted people dancing and singing in celebration. Gan Gimmel enjoyed a yummy indoor BBQ for lunch and a beautiful rainbow cake iced like an Israeli flag as a special treat. Thank you Ms. Terry and Morah Shani for all the yummy food.
Gan Gimmel got to be spectators at the Women's faculty-student basketball game. This is a Yavneh tradition and it was so much fun. Another real treat of today was watching our classmates Emily, Ruthie and Tehilla shine in their Cheerleading performance at halftime!

Kol Hamispalel BimKom HaZeh Bi Yerushalayim...

Gan Daled has been learning about Yerushalayim. The children felt that the Kotel is one of the most important places in Eretz Yisrael, since it is the last wall standing of the Beit HaMikdash. Not only do people from all over the world visit the Kotel daily to daven and say special tefillot, they also face Yerushalayim when they daven each day, no matter what part of the world they are in.

We made Mizrach signs to remind us which way we should face when we daven daily.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS FLAT STANLEY?

He has been sighted at the Kotel in Yerushalayim, at Disneyland in California with Mickey and Minnie, in front of the houses of Parliament in London, in the snows of Minnesota, as well as in an ice castle in Winnepeg, Canada.

Gan Daled enjoyed reading Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. This book is about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally squished "as flat as a pancake" when a bulletin board falls on him. Stanley is very, very flat but otherwise fine. He can slide under doors, go down into sidewalk grates, and even fold himself up small enough to fit into an envelope and be mailed to California for an exciting vacation.

Each child created his/her own Flat Stanley and included him in the letters we sent to relatives and friends all over the world asking about weather and living conditions at their locations. Flat Stanley may be a paper doll but he is no couch potato! He has visited many parts of the globe and our class has been posting the results on a bulletin board with a map of the world. Flat Stanley has helped us learn geography and how weather affects our lives.

We can't wait to read the other installments of Flat Stanley's adventures!