School News, Winter, 2023

Hebrew language day – celebrated on Jan. 12, the birthday of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew – is a day of special activities for the entire school. These included games, presentations, quizzes, films and more. The student council organized a book exchange – Take it and Read – at the end of the day, so that everyone could go home with a new book to read.

Guard appreciation day: Organized by the student council, Haim, the school’s beloved guard, got pictures and thank you cards from the students.

Open house: The open house, for patents of prospective first graders, was full, and we hope to see more of them in the coming school year.

Visit to the Oasis Art Gallery: Dyana, the Gallery curator, invited the students for a gallery tour, during which the children learned about environment and how art can raise questions in their minds, in this case about the environment, about waste materials and recycling, and about how to mount a gallery exhibit and how to behave in a gallery.

Student council: The student council has been quite active. They organized “active breaks,” which take place once a week. These are class recesses in which the kids play all sorts of organized games. Now they look forward to their active breaks, to see what kinds of games they’ll be playing each week.

The student council organized a drive to collect toys for sick children. They packed them together with hand-written signs, and donated them through the organization Salametcom.

In February, when it was cold and rainy, the student council went around and offered cups of tea to the students.

The sixth-graders had a “proper use of electricity” day, in which they learned about saving electricity to save the planet. During the two months, they had a visit from kids from the “Karov” school and they visited in return.

Adam v’adama (people and the Earth), was the HOTAM section taught in the school. The sixth-graders finished research projects and presented their findings to the school. Some investigated plants and how they grow, others worked on inventions to improve lives and the environment. A fifth-grade class turned to geography and maps, creating maps showing the routes from their homes to school. Next, they built 3-d maps and learned about geographical features like volcanoes and glaciers. The other fifth-grade class photographed trees and then learned how to use the internet to identify and read about the trees. The fourth-grade classes learned about the ways we connect to the environment and created art on the subject.

The third-graders created a presentation on the subject of the village of Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom and the special environment they protect. They showed the presentation to the entire school. The second-graders worked on the subject of “me and my family,” and their parents came to school and brought their baby pictures to show. The first graders worked with their parents in the school garden.

Mindfulness and appreciation of the other are taught in the classroom. The fourth-grade classes had an activity day in the forest near the school, led by the class parents, to deepen the ties and social structure of the class and work on empathy between students.

The first and second-graders learned about the Islamic holiday Lailat al Miraj, and the second-graders created interactive notebooks to tell stories. The first-graders had a special day in which they played giant group games together outdoors.

Thanks, as usual, to Nadwa Jaber for the photos and stories.