It has been an exciting week back from Thanksgiving break.  The children quickly became engaged as they returned from the long weekend.

Nature provided us with a wonderful gift Monday morning upon our return.

Morah Katie: How did our buckets get this way?
Noah: It got so cold it got ice!
Tori: It rained and then it got so cold it made the water ice
Morah Katie: Why is the tennis ball half sticking out of the ice?
Dena: It floated up in the water. 
Kian: The ice trapped it.
Morah Katie: Why aren't these rocks I put on the ice dropping into the water?
Noah: Cause it is ICE.

We are beginning to celebrate a great miracle that happened a long time ago.
Morah Tzivie shared a story with us which takes place a long time ago, before our parents were born, before our grandparents were born.

We listened to the similarities between us and the Jewish people who lived over 2000 years ago!
 We give Tzedakah, they gave Tzedakah; we are nice and kind, they were nice and kind.
We celebrate the holidays, they celebrated the holidays; we light Shabbat candles, they lit Shabbat candles.
 There are differences between now and 2000 years ago.
We drive in cars, they rode camels or horses or walked.  We can quickly go to the store to get our food, they had to grow and harvest their food.
We learned that in the city of Jerusalem there was the Beit Hamikdash, the holy temple.  We learned how the  Kohens took care of the temple, and that one of their jobs was to light the menorah each night.

Morah Tzivie brought olives to class.
She explained how the olives were collected from the olive groves in the countryside far away from the Beit Hamikdash.  The olive oil was made by squeezing a lot of olives under a big rock to get the juice and oil from the olive.

Morah Tzivie explained that the oil would rise to the top of the juice, which would then be collected and jarred, and brought to the temple for the menorah.  Just the journey from the groves to the temple was about a week.
Noah: A week can be a long time.  To bad they couldn't just go to the store to get it like my mom.





We lit oil in our classroom menorah and kept an eye on it throughout the day. It had finished burning before lunch, it was fun to watch it.

We began creating a model of the great temple. This involved looking at pictures/drawings of the temple and careful planning and discussion.  One interesting point of discussion was what would have happened if...
Noah: There should be booby traps for the Greeks.
Kian: They would have gotten trapped.  
Noah: They would have been caught and not destroyed the temple.  But the Maccabees were out in the caves and made an army to chase the Greeks out. 
Kian: Traps would have helped.

We had Chanukah parties.

We played with Mr. Potato Head, and drew portraits of Mr. Latke.

We dressed up as the brave Maccabees.