February 11th in Kitah Bet

Kitah Bet students and teachers already have begun preparing for our Kabbalat Siddur Program on April 2nd.  The children have begun learning and practicing some songs and prayers for the program. With the guidance of Cantor Ken, the children have spent quite a bit of time examining the meaning of the words in the shema and the v'ahavta, creating movements to accompany the words. Even without the cantor's help today, the children did a great job recreating the movements and singing those difficult Hebrew words.

We all enjoyed a delicious fruit snack today provided by the synagogue in honor of Tu B'shvat.  We drank different kinds of grape juice (white, purple and mixtures of the two) in honor of the 4 seasons.  Hamorah Margie explained the tradition of eating fruits or nuts with a hard outside and an edible inside (for instance, almonds, bananas ), fruits with a pit in the center (examples include avocado, peach, mango) and fruits that are entirely edible (grapes, apples).

Also in honor of Tu B'shvat, the children each decorated a clay pot and planted parsley seeds. A number of the children remembered that we use parsley to dip in the salt water at the Passover Seder. We are hopeful that the parsley plants may grow in time for this year's seder. A friendly reminder-parsley plants like sun and moist soil.