A great big Todah Rabah to Aviv’s family for hosting our class at their sukkah! The weather cooperated and we had a wonderful visit, enjoying a delicious snack and a story about the four kinds of growing things that we bless during the holiday. The third graders were impressive in the connections that they made to the story, The Beautiful Willow, clearly understanding its messsage of “beauty is only skin deep” and “don’t judge a book by its cover”. 
After reading a number of poems about peace, the third graders enjoyed writing an original poem about peace as we imagined the sukkah to be a shelter of peace that God spreads over us. This is the theme of the Hashkeyvanu prayer which is traditionally recited during the evening service. The students created beautiful dove decorations for the sukkah incorporating their poem as part of it. 
Students compared the qualities of a temporary sukkah with the characteristics of a permanent house using the Hebrew book, The Sukkah is a Special House for the Holiday.
We completed the second entry for Sensing the Holiday Scrapbook Project. The list of sounds generated by the students of sounds that could be heard in the sukkah was quite extensive and well thought out demonstrating growth in our students’ creative thinking since the start of the school year just a few short weeks ago.
Now that the fall holidays have been celebrated, we are focusing on Hebrew language and Torah study. We played musical boxes as a fun filled way to reinforce the Hebrew vocabulary associated with our box unit.
