Head, Heart, and Hand

We began the year with a wonderful Sukkot party for all the 2nd Grade families to be together to celebrate the festive holiday, and to become closer friends. In school, we constantly work together to strengthen our friendships and to learn about how to treat each other with respect and honor. In order to further understand our HHH theme, we relate each week’s Torah portion to the concept of “treating others the way we want to be treated”. We do this through discussions, skits, and artwork. For example, we made artistic renditions of Abraham’s tent, displaying Abraham and Sarah welcoming their guests. We discussed how we want to be treated when we are guests, and how we can do our best to help people feel comfortable in our own homes.

In December, we purchased and wrapped brand new books to donate to the Kate Hanley Family Shelter.

In our Prayer Curriculum, we have been studying the “Refaeinu“ - “Heal Us“ petition from our daily Amidah prayer. When students are out sick, classmates are creating get well cards for one another on our computers. We have also been learning how Native Americans helped the sick in their community. We have begun to support the Ronald MacDonald Home, which houses the families of children in area hospitals. On Grandparents/Very Important Persons Day we made place mats for the children.

The fourth grade visited Capitol Hill recently as part of our unit on the United States Constitution and the Three Branches of Government.

We held a debate on the mock bill H.R. 1234, the Making Electric Vehicles Safe Act of 2010.

We debated whether hybrid and electric cars should emit a sound so that blind pedestrians can hear them coming and therefore cross the street safely.

At issue were the government’s responsibility to keep all citizens safe and the costs associated with such a requirement.

The exercise helped further our understanding of how our government works as well as our Head, Heart, and Hands mitzvah, Opening the Eyes of the Blind.

The bill passed 8 to 4.

Read the transcript here.

Two corrections:Schurburg should read Shurberg, Matriccani should read Matricciani

In Torah class we discussed the meaning of the words that Moshe told God. We read some midrashim that demonstrate that each one of the Rabbis understood Moshe’s words in a different way.

The 5th grade class has collected over $10 for our tzedakah project:Using positive language so that we do not hurt others with l'shon ha'ra (evil tongue/language).

Listen to each recording by clicking on individual names below.

• Deena D.
• Ben E.
• Miryam M.
• Sam R.
• Courtney S.

Our 7th and 8th grade students have been studying rabbinic texts in Mishnah class which teach about our obligation to pursue Tzedek (Justice). The students went on a field trip to Shoppers Food Warehouse, a supermarket, and to Food for Others, a food bank, to learn about what life is like to live on a food stamp budget- and to do something to help.

At the supermarket we learned about the difficulties of feeding a family while living in poverty. We put ourselves in their shoes, pretending we were families of four with a $50 weekly food stamp budget. The students worked in groups of 3-4 and had 30 minutes to shop for their $50 worth of food. This was a huge challenge in that the food had to be kosher, couldn’t require any sort of refrigeration, and had to be somewhat healthy and appealing. All the groups did a great job with the assignment, but realized that the amount of food that they bought was certainly not enough to sustain them happily for a week.

Having done the grocery shopping, we brought the food we bought to Food for Others, a food bank that serves 150+ families in Northern Virginia each month. We donated 66 pounds of food or, roughly 66 meals worth!! It was particularly rewarding to see the food we bought being stocked on the shelves.

At the food bank students saw that the people coming in to get food were not really different from themselves. I overheard such comments as, “That’s so sad, that is a little girl going with her mom to pick up food” and “I can’t believe there is a person with a baby.”

An exceptional highlight of the afternoon was harvesting some bok choy from the Gesher Garden. This is our first crop from Gesher to actually be harvested and used- and we are proud that it went towards doing a mitzvah.

As representatives of Gesher we all felt proud to be helping out others in our local area and were excited by the warm reception and enthusiasm we received from Food for Others. Many students said they were hoping to return and do some volunteer work there on their own time. For more information please go to: www.foodforothers.org.

Our 7th and 8th grade students have been studying rabbinic texts in Mishnah class which teach about our obligation to pursue Tzedek (Justice). The students went on a field trip to Shoppers Food Warehouse, a supermarket, and to Food for Others, a food bank, to learn about what life is like to live on a food stamp budget- and to do something to help.

At the supermarket we learned about the difficulties of feeding a family while living in poverty. We put ourselves in their shoes, pretending we were families of four with a $50 weekly food stamp budget. The students worked in groups of 3-4 and had 30 minutes to shop for their $50 worth of food. This was a huge challenge in that the food had to be kosher, couldn’t require any sort of refrigeration, and had to be somewhat healthy and appealing. All the groups did a great job with the assignment, but realized that the amount of food that they bought was certainly not enough to sustain them happily for a week.

Having done the grocery shopping, we brought the food we bought to Food for Others, a food bank that serves 150+ families in Northern Virginia each month. We donated 66 pounds of food or, roughly 66 meals worth!! It was particularly rewarding to see the food we bought being stocked on the shelves.

At the food bank students saw that the people coming in to get food were not really different from themselves. I overheard such comments as, “That’s so sad, that is a little girl going with her mom to pick up food” and “I can’t believe there is a person with a baby.”

An exceptional highlight of the afternoon was harvesting some bok choy from the Gesher Garden. This is our first crop from Gesher to actually be harvested and used- and we are proud that it went towards doing a mitzvah.

As representatives of Gesher we all felt proud to be helping out others in our local area and were excited by the warm reception and enthusiasm we received from Food for Others. Many students said they were hoping to return and do some volunteer work there on their own time. For more information please go to: www.foodforothers.org.