November 20, 2013
Last Sunday, we had a half hour of Hanukkah songs during music. Students seemed to enjoy themselves. We continued the Hanukkah theme by reading an article about the history of Hanukkah. The date reference was BCE and there was some discussion about that verses the BC/AD that they are used to seeing in textbooks. Students have a lot of background knowledge--we discussed how many people in the world aren't Christian and should we really be marking time that way. We also read a very interesting article that answered the question "Should Hanukkah and Thanksgiving be connected?" Students learned about the history of Thanksgiving and we concluded that it did make sense to link the two celebrations as they have a lot in common. Both articles were from the URJ website: http://www.reformjudiasm.org/jewish-holidays/hanukkah We ended with a rousing game of deidel, 6th grade style--everyone spins theirs and see which one spins the longest!
Happy Hanukkah and Happy Thanksgiving.
Karen Ray
