The crisp cool air was perfect for our annual Playdate in our Park. The ECD children and their families joined at Yavneh Academy as a community to play, climb, and create. The playground was bustling with children. Activities included collaging a large Israeli flag, making a rock pet and challenging the children to try to build a boat that could float in the water in conjunction with Parashat Noach.The creations were unbelievable. The children and their families had a wonderful time.

Meet our Ganon Bet class pet, Shelly the Russian tortoise! Shelly has been a class friend at Yavneh for about 25 years. Sometimes we build her a fun maze for her to walk through with our blocks and toys! Our students are learning to care for her and even have a chance to take her home as a Shabbat guest. Come visit her in our classroom! You can even pet her! 

This week, in honor of Parshat Lech Lecha, the students in Gan Gimmel have been exploring stars. They learned facts about stars, including that the sun is the closest star to the earth, and that stars are really big, but because they are so far away, they look tiny. The students became star gazers and used a light table and paper with stars punched out to create galaxies in our classroom. They created constellations out of loose parts. They also viewed constellations and used them as inspiration to create their own beautiful night skies. 

After learning about the season of fall through the five senses, Class 1B students wrote their first books about their experiences seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and even tasting fall! Then, the students learned about the PicCollage app and went outside to take pictures of fall. They reviewed how to zoom and focus the lens on their iPad cameras when taking a really great picture and the results were unique and interesting fall collages that became their fall book covers. The students had an amazing time creating their fall books and cannot wait to read them to others!

This week fifth graders visited the Yavneh garden. Farmer Shimon taught us about how much emunah in Hashem farmers need to have in order to grow their crops, especially in the winter months. We continued to speak throughout the day and week about how we can recognize Hashem in our lives and increase our own emunah! 

We kicked off our 100 brachot initiative in our 1st and 2nd grade classrooms this week. The students decorated cookies and learned about why we say a bracha rishona on food and drinks, and the power of saying Amen to brachot. They then said a bracha together and enjoyed the cookies. In their classrooms, students are now encouraged to say brachot out loud during snack time and respond Amen to other people's brachot. We are excited to see which class reaches 100 brachot first!

SEL Update

Fourth grade is learning all about our thoughts! We’ve discovered how our thoughts impact our emotions which then impact our behaviors. We were so excited to create our own comics about how focusing on a “helpful thought” instead of an “unhelpful thought” can help us experience more positive emotions and behaviors! We’re looking forward to using this knowledge and practice to step into the roles of directors, filmmakers, and actors, creating our own videos on the subject! 

Mazal tov to the following Middle School students on their completion of Mishnayot Seder Moed:

Daniel Friedman, Yakir Hollander, Zeke Lipsky-Schainker, Caleb Milner, Elliot Minsk, Rachel Rosenbaum,

Mia Vogel, and Yaakov Zarfati

Kol hakavod to the Yavneh Chesed Team! Over 100 bags of clothes were donated from the Yavneh family for Yad Leah. The team sorted and packed the clothing with love and energy on this past Monday night. On Wednesday, the bags and boxes were loaded onto a truck to make its way to Yad Leah headquarters and they will then be shipped to Israel.

Seventh grade social studies students played an "Escape the Room" challenge to unlock the differences between primary and secondary sources. After learning the definitions and reviewing some examples, students practiced differentiating between the two types of sources with three separate challenges. Students raced the clock and each other, sorting through videos and texts of historical events. Finding the sweet prize inside was the perfect way to end their first lesson in our "Thinking like a Historian" unit.