This week in the Fours Oct. 19, 2011
In Music, we played with the shakers and the drum. We clapped and sang "piano" and "vivace". (Ask your children what thaese mean!) We also practiced the musical scales.
We decorated the sukkah with the flowers that we made. We ate snack in the sukkah on Monday, and on Tuesday we had a sukkah party with very special snack to celebrate the harvest of all the fruits and vegetables. Cantor Janet came and sang with us in the sukkah too! We waved the lulav and etrog and sang how G-d is everywhere. It was fun to party with the threes. Thank you to the moms and the PTA for putting together such a lovely party for us!
To celebrate Simchat Torah (which falls Thurs. night and Friday), the fours made their own Torahs.We read about the Torah and how the first story in the Torah is how G-d created the world. We also looked inside a real Torah with the rabbi to see what the words look like - the letters are very fancy and some even have crowns on top! The Torahs looked very beautiful. We saw pictures of how a sofer wirtes a Torah. He uses a special feather called a quill and even has to make his own ink from berries and nuts! The class drew with feathers so they could get a feel of what it's like when a sofer writes a Torah. Some of the children drew pictures in their Torahs depicting creation.
The threes and fours had a Torah parade and we sang "Torah,Torah" to celebrate finishing reading the whole Torah and being able to start all over again. We looked at the ark in the main sanctuary and saw that the Torahs have a beautiful house to live in. The doors are decorated with all the symbols of the different holidays during the year. One of the children thought we should add Halloween onto the doors, but we'll keep them as they are for right now. We also looked inside the ark at all the Torahs and counted how many there were, 11 in all. Jackie told the children that all the Torahs would come out to dance on Simchat Torah! We looked at the beautiful silver crowns and breastplates and yads (pointers), and decided that the Torah must be very, very special.
We are looking forward to a full week of school next week!
Have a good holiday.
Shabbat Shalom!
