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In STEAM this week fourth grade girls explored balanced and unbalanced forces. They created hopper popper models using carboard and rubber bands. The girls experimented to see who could create a model that can hop the highest.

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This week, in enrichment, the third grade boys experimented with electrical circuitry. Using wires and relays they tested out different pathways to figure out the most efficient ways to generate electricity. The boys loved testing the different configurations and these lessons will go a long way in helping them engineer their personal passion projects.

Last week marked the final parsha in Safer Beraishis and our Kindergarten Boys held a special Siyum (party) to say goodbye. Safer Beraishis is full of interesting and fascinating characters so each boy picked their favorite character to dress up as. Their classmates then had to guess who they were. It was a fun and creative way to test their Parsha knowledge. The boys sure know a lot about Beraishis. Now we can't wait to start learning all about Shemos!

This week marks the birthday of Elizer Ben-Yehuda, the innovative thinker and linguist who helped revive Ivrit as a spoken language. In Ivrit Class, our amazing Shinshinim led the students in celebrating his legacy with games and activities! The students reconstructed Mr. Ben-Yehuda's portrait, learned about his contributions to the Hebrew language and even traced the linguistic sources of many of the new words Elizer Ben-Yehuda coined in Ivrit.

The mood was somber throughout the school as we remembered the fallen Israeli soldiers of the IDF and victims of terrorist attacks. Boys and girls in the Middle school participated in a Yom HaZikaron ceremony that explained the meaning of the day, recited prayers for the z'chus of the fallen and their families, a bracha for the current soldiers, and tehilim for all of Klal Yisroel. Mrs. Kalnitz shared stories about Capt. Dekel Swissa, a valiant young man from Bar Giora who served as a Captain in the Golani Brigade,13th Battalion, and was killed at the Paga outpost on October 7 while saving his platoon. Dekel was TDSA's Shinshin in 2018 and lived with the Kalnitz family during his stay in Atlanta.
The lower school visited a display in the lobby depicting a timeline of the wars since the State of Israel's inception. Tomorrow, the mood swings as we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut as a TDSA community.

How do you know the agenda for the day? You read it, of course! I walked into this Kindergarten class as they were learning the day's plan through a reading activity. This boy was asked to find a blended sound of "ST" within the letter about their major activity. Can you find it? He did!

Escape rooms involve critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration; all excellent skills to build in an academic experience. 8th grade Humanities is learning about the Cold War. Throughout the hallway and the classroom, small groups of girls were intensely focused on escaping from the communist, East side of the Berlin Wall to the West side of Germany during this escape-room-style learning activity. In this picture, the group is using Google Translate to understand German documents to help them on their journey. It was amazing to see these girls engaged in such a creative and valuable way while learning!

8G invited me to view their Ivrit presentations today. Working in pairs, they thought of rooms that served a useful purpose. Then they wrote about these rooms in Hebrew and put it on a slide show or poster. Each group presented their project entirely in Hebrew! It was amazing to see their pride, creativity, and skill

These 5th grade boys didn't even notice me walk into the classroom - they were so intensely engaged in this group discussion. Mrs. Bendicoff split the class into sections, some worked independently while this group shared their thoughts in a literature circle format on the the historical fiction book: "If I lived at the Time of the Signing of the Constitution". They came up with some insightful ideas!

"Which two arctic animals will never meet?" This is the question a kindergarten girl asked me as I observed them making polar bears, arctic hares, walruses, snow foxes, and the like. Each table featured a slew of arts and crafts supplies for the excited girls to create their cold-climate animals they learned all about during science. The answer - which I was proud to get correct - is penguins and Polar Bears. Each is native to a different pole of the globe (North and South). Ask a Kindergartener which lives where!