Holiday news- October 7th
We’ve had a couple of very busy weeks with many activities linking to our holidays: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We also know Sukkot is coming up soon.
Our Rosh Hashanah topic smoothly moved towards discussing relationships and especially friendship. One thing we agreed on is that it’s easy to make friends but maintaining our relationships is not always easy. We always need to be careful what kind of words and what kind of behavior we use with our friends. Children came up with ideas such as:
“We do not push and kick.”
“We do not grab things from someone else, we use our words.”
“We help someone who got hurt, we bring an ice pack.”
“We say sorry if we hurt someone.”
These comments helped Morah Chaya and I to extend our conversation to the fact that indeed, saying sorry is nice, but is it enough? How else can we show a person that we meaningfully care?
“If we broke his block construction we say sorry and we also help him build it back up.”
“If we pushed someone we say sorry but we also give him a hug to make him feel better.”
“And we also try hard not to do it again.”
This is what our Yom Kippur holiday is all about; it’s about reflecting on how we can become more responsible of our own actions. And also, why is that important.
We learned a new song, the Friendship Song, which has a pleasant tune and repetitive words, which made it easy to learn: The more we get together, together, together,
The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.
‘Cause my friends are your friends
And your friends are my friends,
The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.
This song made us understand that we can have more than one friend. The more the better.
We were thinking of ways how children can show
their friends that they care for them and also of sharing with us why. It was not long till everyone seemed very pleased with the idea of making a friendship card. We tried to stick to this word, friendship, to put as much emphasis on its’ special meaning. It’s a beautiful word and we all treasure special friends.
Today, while we were talking about how sad it is that Eliana broke her arm, one child came with the idea of making her a card. This is a Get Well card. This linked very well to our friendship topic and children recognized another way of showing someone that we care: “When someone is sick we can make her a card, to make her feel better.” Great idea!
These days we had the opportunity to discuss such important values (the importance of self reflecting- taking our time to think; and relationships and the hard work we need to put into them to make them last) and Morah Chaya and I are very happy with how children participated with views of their own. Activities when Morahs talk very little and children are fully participating, they are the greatest experiences!
In the meanwhile we continue working with small groups every morning. It works well, with children hardly willing to leave after the activity. The main thing is that our activities are enjoyable! Children work well in groups, they understand the importance of working within a team “We are helping each other”.
Till next time, Happy Yom Kippur!
Morah Delia and Morah Chaya.