Torah Day School of Atlanta Home

Our very own Final Four took place last night. Mishna Madness culminated with a playoff event at the Atlanta Scholars Kollel and the energy in the air was palpable. All of TDSA's Middle School Boys worked incredibly hard and learned an absolutely astronomical 65,076 Mishnayos altogether! With good food and a lot of good cheer; parents, peers, and community members came to support our final four contestants. The finalists were tested on their knowledge of Mishnayos by Rabbi Pransky, Rosh Kollel, and wowed everyone with their knowledge and understanding. More than anything, what stood out was the camaraderie among the boys as they encouraged each other and spurred each other on to greater heights of learning, and their enthusiasm and love of Torah!

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! We only have 18 minutes to turn this dough into Matzah! Do you think we can make it? This week, TDSA's gym lobby was transformed into a real matzah factory. With the timer running down the minutes, the students rolled, and poked holes in freshly made matzah dough and rushed it to Rabbi Rubin who was manning the real matzah oven! Some of the classes made it in under 18 minutes and some didn't but everyone had fun, making (and eating) their own matzah!

TDSA's second grade girls are learning the Haggadah in three languages. Together with Morah Cohen, the girls are learning how to say the Mah Nishtana (the four questions), using American Sign Language. The girls are hard at work practicing their new skill so that their ready to wow their parents at the Seder! By learning the Mah Nishtana in the Hebrew of the Haggadah, English and ASL the students are gaining a deeper understanding of the meanings of the four questions in multiple ways!

Once again, our second graders are hard at work building something exciting. With expert supervision by Rabbi Rubin, the students are constructing the frame for a creative Sefirah Counter. With the 49 days of Sefirah approaching the students cut the pieces of the frame and screwed them together. The Sefirah counter is also a practical lesson on Hebrew numbers. Once the students were done with the frame, they were given paper strips with each day of the omer on them. The strips were shuffled and the students had to arange them in the correct order before putting them together. TDSA would like extend a special thank you to Mr. Andy Lewis for providing the custom plastic front covers (extra thick this year!) to place on top of the Sefirah counters to make them extra sturdy and durable! We hope our students will use their Sefirah counters to mark each day of the omer and build the excitement towards Matan Torah!

If you take a trip down to the Kodesh Resource Center at TDSA you will see an amazing sight: Lettuce growing in the middle of classroom. For a second year in a row, TDSA is growing lettuce hydroponically. There's no dirt or soil and Rabbi Rubin needs to keep the system perfectly calibrated. From students checking the Ph of the water, to the right amount of light and "wind" it's amazing how many different things we need to keep on top of to successfully grow lettuce. This certainly makes us appreciate what goes into growing the Maror we use at the seder and enhances our students' understanding of the mitzvah!

Mazal Tov to Morah Bracha's first grade students! They finished learning all of the hebrew letters in script. The students celebrated their accomplishment with their a fun Siyum and demonstrated their mastery of their new skill by writing their Hebrew name's in script using pull-and-peel twizzlers! Being able to recognize, and write Hebrew using script letters will help enhance the students' learning for years to come and we're so proud of them for achieving this milestone.

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!