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Teacher Appreciation week has been in full-swing all week at TDSA! After the wonderful coffee pick me up on Monday morning, the PTA continued with an amazing week by showing apprecation in a number of exciting ways. They gifted the staff beautiful and sturdy TDSA Staff umbrellas (perfect for this week's rainy weather). On Wednesday, they treated the teachers to a delicious lunch catered by Sababas, and on Thursday they provided a delicious and very appreciated brunch! They even went above and beyond creating adorable signs and slogans for each day to show their appreciation. One of the most appreciated things PTA has done this week? Send out a an adorable thank you video featuring our adorable students! Thank you so much to TDSA's staff and administrators for everything you do for our children! And thank you to the PTA for going above and beyond to show our teachers how much appreciate what they do!

Beth Jacob is hosting Level Up Your Happiness: Five Paradigm Shifts to Improve Your Family’s Joy Trajectory - a talk especially geared for parents and grandparents, with Mrs. Beth Perkel at 10am on Sunday morning, May 17 in the Conference Room. Mrs. Perkel is the honors director at Touro University’s Sarah Hartman Women’s College in Chicago, beloved podcast host and and author of her recent book, Light at the Beginning of the Tunnel: Wiring Our Children for Happiness.

To mark their conclusion of their unit on produce in Ivrit, the second grade girls made "Salat" (Salad) with Morah Helen. Morah Helen bought in various vegetables. and after identifying them in Ivrit the girls picked the vegetables they wanted and cut them up themselves to create beautiful and delicious salads. The girls enjoyed their "Agvania" (tomatoes), "Palpel" (pepper) and "Melafifone" (cucumbers) and had a great time comparing and discussing their favorite salad vegetables!

As a reward for their hard work, learning, davening and doing chessed over Pesach Vacation, the middle school boys joined their Rabbeim and a few chaperones for a packed evening trip. After a stop at Brewster's to enjoy some ice cream the boys headed over to bowling and had a great time celebrating their accomplishment! Keep up the good work!

Of the many dramatic moments in Sefer Beraishis, Birchas Yaakov-Yaakov's blessings to his children before his passing, are a particuarly poignant one. Fourth grade girls completed their unit on Birchas Yaakov and treated their parents and family members to a beautiful and dramatic play outlining the various blessings each Shevet received and why. The care and effort the students put in was evident in every line they delivered and every song they sang. Their play was a beautiful reminder that we should embrace the beauty of our differences, because our unique strengths can all be used to serve Hashem in a personal and meaningful way!

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!