RELIGIOUS SCHOOL -PTTS

By Lynn Kaye, Principal
Our Religious School year has gotten off to a marvelous start, with a strong emphasis on Hebrew learning and developing the classroom community. Our parents were invited to a school orientation in October and many good ideas about how the parents can further enhance the educational experience for the students were developed.
Our youngest class for 5-6 year olds enjoys its Thursday
“Shabbat Dinner” rituals when they invite a guest and perform the Friday night meal rituals and then settle down to hallah, grape juice and lively discussion. They are also learning their Hebrew alphabet bit by bit.
Our 7-9 year olds are continuing in their Hebrew language
development, as well as their focus on biblical and
Talmudic personalities which the students learn about and
think about how the lessons and challenges that they went
through can be relevant to their own lives.
Our 10-12 year olds are embarking on a Jewish ethics
curriculum emphasizing middot, good character traits and
how the Jewish tradition teaches them. Their word wall is filling up, focusing on comprehension of prayer-book vocabulary.
Our teenage class has studied details of Jewish life-cycle
events like the Jewish wedding, as well as begun to explore in a deeper way what constitutes their Jewish identities. If you would like to learn more about the Hebrew school which meets on Thursday afternoons and Sunday mornings, please contact me.
During Hol haMo’ed Succot, (the intermediate days of Sukkot) we had a school family dinner in the succah. It
was a chance for families and students to spend time together in a relaxed environment, and was one of the suggestions which came out of the parent orientation. I would like to thank all the school parents for engendering an atmosphere of commitment to learning and growth at PTTS.