Ahava and tree rings of life to celebrate Tu B'Shevat

Shalom!

How can it be that we are over the half-way mark for our school year at JQuest?! Wow!
Over the past few weeks we have come together in Omanut to put a beautiful 'pop up' art installation on our Temple Isaiah campus-- and it turned out fabulous! Positioned over the outside of our beautiful amphitheater, Ahava ( translated to "Love" in Hebrew) is 6 and a half feet by 9 feet of bright acrylic tempered canvas and it really made a statement, even through all the downpours that we have had! Based on the famed "Love" by artist Robert Indiana (who designed the original Ahava from steel beams in Jerusalem!) we paid homage to this famous outdoor art installation and the Omanut students loved that if they travel to Israel, they could see it in person!

Robert Indiana's Ahava in Jerusalem, done in 1977:

Painting our Ahava:

The finished product! 

Considering it is almost Tu B'Shevat, our birthday of the trees, I designed a Tree Rings of Life project that the kids could do-- and it was very successful! Bright colors of the circles done in oil pastels and water colors, everyone added their own life experiences that were significant to them. Looking forward to putting them up in the hallway and showing the entire work when we have our end of the year Art Show. We are enjoying Yoga, Hebrew through Movement and Music with Eric during the week and Revital on the weekends. We are all very blessed to be able to come together, learn from one another and be the great community of friends that we are. Plant a tree or other wonderful things in honor of Tu B'Shevat- our future generations will thank you!
Until next time...
B'Shalom,
Heather

Here are some pictures from our latest  Hebrew Through Movement classes, learning about the fruits and trees of Israel in Hebrew...

A new year, and great things in store...

Shalom,
We are back and refreshed and ready after the Winter break holidays and subsequent extra week off last week and we are energized for the rest of the year and all of our projects to come!
Here are some pictures to bring you some smiles from our alternative material Menorah making for Hanukkah, and our wonderful large scale "Mi Chamocha diorama" ...
Omanut is  now gearing up for our next two surprise public art pop-ups and the chance to work with Teva and Bonim rebuilding our mosaic and tile wall in the garden, as well as the very fun "God shopping" activity where we all peruse different opinions and beliefs about God and create some amazing multi-dimensional art work in the theme of Yaacov Agam. Good stuff happening for all of us, and i'm excited to think about all that we will show at the end of the Year Art Show! Parent Program with metal and wire artist coming next month, too, so keep your eyes peeled! For now, though, we will complete our project on the Ten Commandments which will be made into a book to take home in June. Your children are inspiring!
B'Shalom,
Heather

In case you missed it, our Exodus diorama depicting Mi Chamocha! 

Hebrew Through Movement fun with Tammy and Yardena

Making alternative material Menorahs for Hanukkah

Music with Eric! 

Who created the best Exodus multi-dimensional large scale diorama? Omanut!

Shalom,

We have so many things to be grateful for this season-- hope that your Thanksgiving break vacation time was wonderful! We managed to finish the Mi Chamocha diorama that takes over 4 tables (!) just before we left for the holiday break. We will be doing some writing and putting dialogue to our large diorama - which is quite impressive, if I do say so myself-- but you have to see it to believe it!

The Omanut students want to make a little video to show along side our finished piece, and we will spend a bit of time to record them as the characters that they made from clay and other mediums to show during the video montage at the end of the year during our Omanut Art Show.

We have had peaceful Nechama Yoga with Miss Kendra, fun and energizing Music time with our new weekday song leader, Eric , and well as continuing to move and groove while learning Ivrit- Hebrew Through Movement!- with the awesome duo of Tammy and Yardena.
Looking forward to Hanukkah and Bring-a-Friend Day later this month...
Keep being creative! We sure will!
B'shalom,
Heather

One of the videos that we watched from BimBam.com served as a great inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKp6y2Lpgxg



*I've attempted to upload a large series of pictures for 2+ hours now,  unfortunately my computer is not cooperating! Because I want you all to be as caught up as possible, i've decided to publish this now; I will add photos of the amazing Omanut students working hard from start to finish on our diorama as soon as I can access my pictures to do so!*

Exodus Multi-media Project

Shalom!

 

It was a beautiful day to start working on our project centering around Exodus yesterday! During our discussion we broke up into small groups and decided who would work on which part of our large- but small scale!- representation of our ancestors escaping from Egypt after the plagues to head to the promised land of Israel through the desert. "Mi Chamocha" is a very special part of our Tefillah time and we will be incorporating that part of Torah into our piece as well. 

Everyone has been listening to each other and sharing ideas for the mixed media that we will be using and, if we are able, several students want to do a video for us to share- stop motion style! If any parents are adept at stop motion effects with lego, clay and lots of paint and paper, please let me know! We'd love for you to join us when our project is complete in a couple of weeks. 😀

We watched this video yesterday about Nachshon and this should give you a little peek into what we will be doing! 

http://www.g-dcast.com/nachshon/

Thanks so much for your support and for raising such great kids who make my days at JQuest so awesome and fulfilling as an educator! I love being their teacher! 

See you soon,

Heather 

Look what we did!

Shalom, everyone!

We did it-- we put together our "Shalom" outdoor art installment this week and it was very well-received by our whole Temple Isaiah community! (Even the Gan Ilan preschool kids were curious and now want to make an outdoor piece of art themselves, which I will be working on with them soon!) In case you are more curious about the exact artwork that we focused on emulating, here is a link to Mel Alexenberg's installment, featured on his website.

http://www.melalexenberg.com/artwork.php?id=1

Here are some pictures of the end result, be on the lookout for another pop up from Omanut soon!

We have been having fun music time with Revital- here is an example of Omanut in action!

Next in our Omanut studio, we will be bringing Exodus to life, as we enter the "Torah" portion of curriculum. We talked about many ways to showcase what we have been talking about and decided that a scene based on Mi Chamocha will be a large part of our next project.
Can't wait to start working on it, and since it is fairly large and detailed, we will be concentrating that for the next couple of weeks.
Be well! Until next time,
Heather

A surprise art installation is coming!

Shalom!

We have had a fun week in Omanut- we put up our completed projects from the High Holy days around our classroom and on our bulletin board in the hallway and since the students were so excited about a project that we talked about earlier in the semester before my absence, I decided that it would be a great team building experience for all of us to start that project now and not worry about possible rainy or yucky weather- we were going to go for it and problem solve any issue as a group!

As you know, in Omanut we learn about male and female Jewish Artists, and I switch them out every week so there is an even representation. One recent artist was Mel Alexenberg and we examined some of his eclectic work. One project that appealed to us was his installment sending painted and decorated alefbet letters/ a Hebrew message into the desert sky via weather balloons filled with helium-- and we are going to surprise our Temple Isaiah community by making our own interpretation of that work come to life this week. Be on the lookout!

Here is a link to Mel Alexenberg's work. I will be emailing Mr. Alexenberg and sending him pictures of our project once it has happened this week; he lives in Israel and is still creating! The kids (and I!) would love to have him respond, so wish me luck!
http://www.melalexenberg.com

We had extra special Yoga with Miss Kendra on Tuesday and Wednesday this week which the students really responded positively to- it was a relaxing, centering and peaceful time. Hebrew Through Movement is special to see because of everything the kids know and do that they didn't think they did! The smiles of recognition are awesome, and it is so great to see them light up when Yardena or Tammy say "Yoffi!" (Hebrew for: "Good job! Great!")

Looking forward to a wonderful November in our Omanut studio!
Be well,
Heather

Here are some pictures from this week's creative process:

Fall holidays in Omanut

Shalom!

I'm back in the classroom after having surgery in September and was so very happy to see everyone for class and Simchat Torah dancing and fun last night! My Omanut students are wonderful and had done a lot of inspiring and beautiful work from the lesson plans that I had sent in during my absence. Since yesterday was spent catching up and finishing any projects that may not have been complete, we did a lot of talking about what Simchat Torah is exactly and how my last lesson connects to the holiday itself.

The class created their own Torah pictures-- and in their abstract ways, I think it was extremely successful once we started talking about what they would add or write in Torah if given the chance; The art project consisted of a heart surrounded by Torah scrolls.We know that Simchat Torah concludes with the end of the Torah, right back to starting again once it is rolled back up. The conclusion of Torah is marked with the letter Lamed from the word Yisrael. It begins again with the letter Bet in Bereshit; Connected, the lamed and bet spell Lev. It is with your heart and passion that should be put into the Torah, so I thought that this was appropriate in illustrating how special Torah is, and give the kids a lasting impression of what Simchat Torah is. We will be attaching all the pieces that were done for this project on to our bulletin board, so everyone who visits our hallways will know about the love and creativity that are put into Torah.

Here are some examples of work:

We also watched a video about Simchat Torah from Bim Bam, formerly G-dcast.com-- feel free to watch it again with your child and have a conversation about what the night meant to them.

Thank you all for your good wishes and warm welcome back!
See you soon,
Heather