Bucket Filling and Chesed

This fall, the teachers of the Children’s Center have been on a journey of learning in the course, “Teaching and Parenting Through a Jewish Lens.” Last week’s stop on our journey, allowed us to explore the concepts of chesed (love and kindness) and tzdaka (justice and charity).

Ronit, our teacher, eloquently connected our current curriculum of bucket filling to chesed. In the story, “Have you Filled a Bucket Today?” it is written, “All day long everyone in the whole wide world walks around carrying an invisible bucket.” Ronit explained that what we fill these buckets with is in fact, chesed. Together we explored many texts and interpretations regarding chesed. One interpretation that particularly rung true of bucket filling was, “The challenge of activism is to ignite the divine spark present in the human spirit (Rabbi Avi Weiss, Spiritual Activism.”

As a room of educators, we discussed this idea of doing chesed and igniting the divine spark in each child. In the Kohavim class, we are thinking a lot about how when you fill someone’s bucket your bucket is also filled. When you do chesed, it ignites this spark within you. The spark is in everybody, but it needs to be ignited. As educators, we are striving to understand each of your children and support them to ignite their own spark. As we left the wonderful day of teacher learning, many of us were inspired by the natural connection between bucket filling and Jewish values. We are eager to expand on our bucket filling curriculum by connecting it the chesed, as well as igniting the spark in each child.

-Jesse Feigenbaum, Children's Center Teacher

From the Children's Center to the Teens

The Children's Center students are expert challah makers; many bake their own challah every Friday morning as part of their classroom Shabbat experience.  This past Friday the four year olds in the Tel Aviv class were charged with an extra responsibility:  making a challah for each of the 10th graders who would be confirmed on Shavuot on Saturday night. The four year olds love looking at the photos in the hallway featuring past years of confirmation students, and look forward to the day when it will be their turn for this special day. So the chance have an important role in this year's confirmation service was quite an honor.  What a wonderful way to connect our youngest TBS students with some of our oldest. As you can see, the confirmands were delighted to receive this gift from the Children's Center students.

Thanks to Rabbi Todd for capturing the moment on video!

Excercising our Minds & Bodies

The children of TBSCC are movers and moving!  I have the privilege of moving with all the Children's Center children.  We have a chance to solidify some of the learning concepts from the kinesthetic realm - we are having so much moving fun!  We "warm up" together - learning about our body parts and all the many ways they can move from head to toe, recognizing all the connections between the bones, muscles, and breathing; time, space and force (fundamentals of dance and movement in its many forms).  Each participant has a chance to lead the group finding their own way of moving across the room.

We have explored:  lines, circles, balance, qualities of  force:  floating to strong pushing or pulling with strength (defying gravity), spacial: personal space and communal space, stretching and contracting, expanding and narrowing, focusing; and time: rhythmic drumming, fast - slow, impulsive - smooth.  We took a journey to outer space and a magic carpet ride and experienced the individual uniqueness of a snowflake.  The children exercise their bodies, their minds and their senses are stimulated and articulated, and then we recenter ourselves to adapt again to the classroom energy, space and pulse.

Next week will be TuB'Sh'vat and we will act out growing as in the Giving Tree.  We are so blessed with such creative, imaginative, and developmentally exceptional children!  I love how they work together enriching our experiences.

Nancy Kreiger aka Dancing Nancy

Refecting on God's Rules

Cross posted on the TBS Children's Center blog.

With the progress reports and conferences commencing, reflection has come into play for the students as well as the teachers. The teachers have reflected on the students’ progress and certain events that have happened in the classrooms to create anecdotes for the parents. Here at the preschool, the children are cultivating the fundamental skills that will comprise the framework of their education as well as their lives. From this, I have begun reflecting on what I consider the foundation blocks God has provided for us through the Ten Commandments. As well, in the book of Exodus God provides us with addition rules and guidelines to help us reflect on our actions and expectations as Jewish people. I began to ask; are these guidelines still relevant to us today, and if so, how? Which of these guidelines speaks to me, and how do I interpret it into my life? 

Some of the rules from the book of Exodus that I was reflecting on, and would like to share are:

• You shall not oppress nor do any wrong to strangers, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
• When you see a wandering animal, return it to its owner. Help all animals, even if they are the animals of your enemy.
• You shall accept no bribes, for bribery blinds the clear-sighted and turns the words of the righteous to falsehood.

Julia Wise, Children's Center Teacher

The TBS Children's Center Blog

Blog Shalom is not the only new blog in the building.

Ellen Dietrick began as director of the TBS Children’s Center this summer, and one of the first gifts she gave to our preschool was to start up a Children’s Center blog. New laptops were purchased for the classrooms, teachers were trained on blogging, and all parents were sent an invitation to be a member of the blog community.

This new blog creatively addresses an ongoing goal for our preschool: to increase communication between school and home (noting that communication is a two-way street). Not only does the blog act as a reliable space for information that parents need to know, it also makes it easy for parents to post comments and questions.

The blog is mainly about the children, but the conversation goes way beyond the topic of adorableness. Pictures and videos of students enjoying all kinds of activities are posted several times per week. Teachers take turns writing their thoughts. There are recipes, quotes from the children’s classroom discussions, and ideas for how to enrich and support learning at home. A list of upcoming events and reminders is continually updated. There are also links to other websites and resources that may be of interest to parents, including programs offered at the Temple. Anything child-focused can be brought to parents’ attention, and it’s all just a click away. This is enormously helpful, but what I want to point out about this blog is not just its facility in broadening our range of information, but its potential for deepening our focus on our school community.

On the blog there is a “getting to know you” section about the teachers, each of whom wrote a short piece about themselves before school began this fall. These pieces contain their reasons for becoming a teacher, their pedagogical philosophies, their goals for the upcoming school year, and their hobbies and interests. The teachers’ words set the tone for the rest of the blog, and remind us that we are all tuned in to this community for the same reason: we care about the children who go to school here.

Every week teachers write about curriculum themes and day-to-day fun. They also write their own reflections on what is being taught and learned. These posts go light-years beyond simple descriptions of classroom activities. When teachers write about the deep thinking that goes into a lesson, everyone learns more. When parents post comments in response to these reflections, teachers gain well-deserved feedback about their work, and everyone learns even more.

The new TBSCC blog has set the stage for families to communicate publically, for the benefit of the entire school community. Public communication, when it is constructive and respectful, underscores the relevance of a community and deepens the commitment of its members. This is a gift we can all appreciate.