Shalom!
We have been doing a lot of work covering the stories of Exodus in the Torah after the High Holidays concluded and everyone has been super creative telling the story of Moses individually in "comic book" form, as well as working together as a group to paint their interpretation of the Plagues of Egypt.
Music with Joel is always fun, as is Hebew Through Movement with Tammy and Yardena. Below are some pictures, please enjoy!
All the best,
Heather
Working on our comic book entries about the life of Moses
We are fortunate to be able to teach curriculum that it integral to being Jewish, and this year we are getting to experience the High Holidays and talk about what it means to us as Jews, as artists, as people. The students of Omanut have had a lot to contribute during our conversations so far this year, and it wasn't any different as we continued to discuss the High Holidays.
Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish New Year, is the beginning of the Days of Awe, which concludes with Yom Kippur - our day of Atonement- when we are 'sealed' once again into the Book of Life. In order to make this a bit more concrete for the students, we examined it in different ways.
We sketched what our favorite memories have been (most love apples and honey and are all about having a "sweet New Year"!), what special memories we have had surrounded by our family, friends, havurah, and at the synagogue; and after many of them witnessed G-dcast's ScapeGoat in the foyer of the Sanctuary on Yom Kippur, they were eager to design and paint their wishes for the new year, what they wished to do better, and what inspires them to create a painting that is an interpretation of AWE! Is it beautiful? A little bit scary? Surprising?
Shown below are some selections of the paintings that the Omanut students have done this week.
Wishing you and those you love the very best! I look forward to seeing many of you on Tuesday evening, October 7th, for our Back to School Night. g'mar chatimah tovah,
Heather
This video is a great one, and brought out a lot of inspired discussion and artwork in our class!
The Maccabeats, "Book of Good Life"
And now... Our paintings that gave the Omanut students a feeling of AWE... some worked individually, some worked in groups. They all learned from one another, and then wrote a few lines about what their painting was about and why. Enjoy!
We have been having a lot of fun in Omanut getting to know one another, and the school year is off to a fabulous start! We established our classroom rules, have created pieces of art based on the work of several Israeli and Jewish artists and have talked about what various Jewish symbols mean in depth.
I found a great book, "50 Jewish Artists you should know", that I have shown to the Omanut classes and we have worked on a few different short projects in small groups as well as individually, based on some of the artists we talked about so far.
We also talked about what the year will look like in terms of projects and curriculum and decided that we want to put together several 'public art installations' as part of our end of the year Omanut Art Stroll, since I showed the students the following site that made them very excited about the possibilities of what we can do around our beautiful campus- feel free to check out some of the art on the site and see what conversations can be sparked with your child!
http://israelpublicart.com/public_art/
Our final one day project that many of the students took home was a personal Tashlich project-- a water color in which they painted whatever they wanted and once it was dry, they wrote a goal for the New Year; something they were sorry for, and something they were happy about/ wished for. My advice to them was to put the water color in a sink of water and see their regrets disappear, and those good wishes to float into the universe to God. I hope they were able to translate that to you, if you wondered what they were doing!
Hebrew Through Movement and Music with Joel continue to be positive additions to our class time, and I will post pictures of the class in action soon!
All the best to you and your loved ones for a sweet, healthy, happy New Year... It is my privilege to be a part of the lives of your talented children who inspire me all the time!
L' Shanah Tovah,
Heather
