April 19 recap

I know I won’t have time to keep this daily blogging up but a few more posts won’t kill me.

A. Tefillah time – Reviewed yesterdays ideas. ברוך שאמר.  I had the class try to figure out what was similar about the words אומר, עושה, מרחם etc. Once they got they were הווה words, we had a conversation about ה’s ongoing presence, the מכות, Rav Chanina Ben Dosa lighting vinegar instead of oil.

B. Chumash: פרק ל: ד-ט. These were much easier pesukim. No deep questions. I had students read it without any preteaching since the kids knew at least 94% of the words and grammar rules as tested before on the Pre Perek Prep for פרק ל. I did pre-teach the Shoresh ד.ו.ן I drew a judge on the board and asked them what a בית דין is and what a דיין is.

Post learning – we discussed  how נפתולי אלקים are  tefilla. We reviewed how powerful לאה’s tefillos were. with the proof being she got the Leviim, Kings, Kohanim and Talmidei Chachamim (this concept REALLY impresses third graders because kohanim in the beis Hamikdash are just so cool! ) and filled out our linear translation


Questions from the class: 
What is the difference between an אמה  as רחל calls בלהה and a שפחה as the Torah calls her?
Why does it say ותהר but then quantifies that בלהה was the one giving birth?
Why does it say with בלהה, and זלפה a 2nd son without mentioning there was a first and later with לאה that it was a 5th & 6th son but not a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th son?
Why is בלהה written with a B and a V sound?

C. Ivrit – More journal writing.
I reviewed the concept of אני אוהבת לכתוב  (Makor, transitive for regular verbs & III-ה

עבר  for all singular verbs
עבר for all singular verbs with a II-י or a II-ו (such as ב.ו.א or ש.י.ם).

All the rules were written on the board. A sample שרש was written in blue and the conjugations were written in red to make it easy to use as a reference for the writing. I used a separate black board to list their requested words. No one wrote about vomit today. Baruch Hashem!

They had to write 4 sentences minimum because we only had 5 minutes

  1. what a boy did
  2. what a girl did
  3. a sentence using verbs with II-י or II-ו
  4. What they see that they enjoy doing

Their picture prompt was

 

D. Limudei Kodesh. 
We read about Rabbi Akiva’s leaving for Yeshiva, his return and subsequent immediate leav taking. The kids found this part of the story very moving. Rabbi Akiva Story

E. Gedolim – Rav Chaim Brisker – I started off by drawing my very crude European map and showing where Lithuania was. I explained how the period from post-Civil War to World War I was a time of big changes. I didn’t mention the industrial revolution because it wasn’t important today but I did explain the rise of nationalism and the interest in the common man on a third grade level. (Nationalism: Imagine if every street thought they were the best – I say Go Oakdale – B.G. says “Go Commonwealth” etc. Now imagine that we have airplanes and machine guns. Now imagine that we need to prove we are the best and get really insulted when you say you’re better. Now imagine that different streets gang up with each other to stockpile weapons to fight the other streets. What is going to happen?   Csars vs. Communists: Imagine if on your street there was a family who could walk into your kitchen any time and take your stuff, what would you feel? How would you fight this (1st. convince others its not fair, discuss it and then 2. fight) Then we spoke about why a dormitory yeshiva was a new idea. We also talked about how scientist classify information so they can communicate and research (talking about a mammal vs. a reptile is more useful than just talking about animals) and how the Brisker Method of classifying halachos could have the same results.


Homework was just reading and translating.