Shabbat Family Party

Today one of the three year old classes had a Shabbat Family Party.
The children made center pieces, decorated the room, each decorated a letter in the big sign welcoming everyone and made a Shabbat Present for their parents. The Shabbat Present was a decorated plaque with the blessing of the children on it.
Each family was also given a lovely pamphlet from Berman House Publications with the Shabbat Seder in it which is very user friendly.
The children were chanting Hachnasat Orchim (welcoming guests) all the way down to the party room. They gave tzdakeah on the way into the room and sat with their family guests.
Rabbi Tobin led the families in the Shabbat Seder and then everyone ate the food the children had prepared. They ended the party with the modified Birkat Hamazon our children recite every day after snack. The children enjoyed sharing their Shabbat party with their families while they learned the beautiful value of Hachnasat Orchim.

Beginning notes from the Director of Early Childhood Education

A bit of an introduction to start my blogging adventures! I have been the director at Beth Shalom's preschool for the last 16 1/2 years. This preschool has been around for over 60 years and is a wonderful preschool with a very rich history in Jewish Early Childhood Education.
I was so excited when Max informed me that we were going to be part of the vision documentation project!

Max came last week and did a fabulous in-service with our staff on Jewish Ethics and values in our classrooms. While we have always stressed ethical and moral behavior in our classrooms, with the exception of one of our 3 year old classes we have not focused on labeling most of these values. We have always labeled Tikun Olam and Tzedakah but we have not labeled other values consistently.

As we were processing "Why are Jewish Values important in the life our classrooms?" some of the comments teachers made were:

• They help us live a life of meaning,
• Shalom Bayit
• God gave us the values and laws, more laws than any other people-a blue print to live by.

This was a very interesting and insightful exercise!

Max helped us process and focus on the importance of including the Hebrew names of Jewish Values as well as incorporating as many Jewish Values into daily classroom activities and curriculum as possible.
 Today in her weekly newsletter to the parents, one of the preK teachers reported her class would be focusing on Derech Eretz-common courtesy, treating every person with respect. This is a very appropriate and timely value to teach preK kids second semester, as they are getting testy with adults as well as their classmates! The other beauty of this newsletter note is we are teaching many of the parents as we teach the children.

Tomorrow in our weekly staff meeting we will be talking about how each class will be enriching their future curriculum.

Please check back as we continue down this road of growing and improving our wonderful school!