Chinese New Year

Social Studies

This week we celebrated the Chinese New Year! We compared the Chinese New Year with Rosh Hashanah, seeing some similarities and differences in food, clothing, music, and symbolism. We ate oranges because for the Chinese New Year they symbolize wealth and good luck. We also made “good fortune” mobiles with Chinese characters that mean happiness, and good luck coins.

See if there are any Chinese New Year celebrations in your neighborhood, you might be able to see some fireworks!

Reading

What is more relaxing than hot peppermint tea and a good book on a chilly day? The second graders sure found it relaxing when we had “tea time reading groups”. With warm tea we kept reading and exploring new vocabulary, spelling, plot twists, and characters in our reading group books.

Math

This week we learned about measuring the volume or a liquid in liters. We made predictions about whether the volume of a liquid would change if it was transferred to different sized containers. Most of us guessed that the volume would not change, and we were right, It did not! We also finished our math workbook just in time for break and can’t wait to start a new unit and new workbook when we get back.

If you have free time over the break do some of the empty pages in the math workbook with your child! There are also challenge pages in the book, feel free to try those out as well!

Yahadut: Explorng Megillat Esther

We looked closely at an actual scroll of Esther, the traditional text read on the holiday of Purim. Students made predictions as to how the megillah would be similar or different from the Torah scroll that we looked at, at the beginning of the year. “They will both be written in Hebrew”, “They both are written on parchment with ink”. We also wondered whether or not God’s name would be in the megillah, and if so, how many times. Ask your child what we learned about how many times God’s name is actually in the Purim story.

As we read about the story in Hebrew, we have been examining how characters feel, and also looking for instances of “V’nahafochu”, things turning upside down. Ask your child if they know an example of “vnahafochu” in the megillah story.