Torah Day School of Atlanta Home

This past week in Mrs. Castle's science class, the 6th grade learned all about wave mechanics and how energy is transmitted through solid objects. In order to better understand the difference between longitudinal and transverse wave motion, the 6th graders used a slinky. By shaking the slinking back and forth and moving it from side to side the students were able to visualize the differences in how transverse and longitudinal waves move through space.

There are no words to describe the focus, pride, and intensity with which our students worked this past Monday. In conjunction with the incredible organization, Boots for Israel, our students unboxed and packaged boots to send to IDF soldiers in Israel. The students took the time to write personalized messages to the soldiers who would be receiving the boots to express their appreciation for the soldier's hard work and sacrifice on behalf of Klal Yisrael. All together, the students packaged 650 boots for shipment to Israel. A special thanks to Mr. Yakir Wachstock for all the tireless organizing that you do for Boots For Israel and an extra special thank you to Judah Holland who generously sponsored most of the cost of purchasing and shipping the boots as well as the many TDSA parents and families who contributed to the endeavor as well!

The 4th grade boys worked with a variety of hand tools, and discovered just how incredibly difficult building the teivah must have been. After coming back inside, and reviewing the rashi, Rabbi Rubin posed the same question he asks in his Spotlight Dvar Torah this week: "How could Noach have spent 120 years working so hard on building the teivah and not really believe that the flood was coming?" The hands-on experience really brought a new level of understanding and meaning to the Torah's message for us all.

In honor of this week's Parsha, the kids in Kitah K made Keshes Fruit skewers. After the mabul Hashem sent a beautiful rainbow/Keshes as a sign to the world that He would not bring another mabul so our students arranged colorful fruits in rainbow order and made rainbows of their own...that they could eat! Yum!

For last week's Fun Friday, Ms. Leader's third grade students busted out their addition and subtraction skills and tested them out on real-life problems. Moving from station to station the students used their math skills to calculate the costs of real items that they can buy in Krogers or Costco! There was something incredibly exciting about seeing how math can be applied to real-life everyday problems!

Mrs. Best's 8th grade students are hard at work on their unit about Persuasive Essays. This week she asked them to construct a persuasive essay-but not by writing- instead the students were given a collection of sentences and they need to sort these sentences in groups into a cohesive and understandable persuasive essay. The activity was a fun and creative way to familiarize themselves with the mechanics of persuasive writing!

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!