Congregation Beth Sholom - Chevra Shas

Grades Pre-K to 7 - Sundays: 9 am - Noon

Grades 3-7 - Wednesdays: 4:30-6:00 pm

The goal of the Religious School is to set our youngsters on the path to becoming capable, competent Jewish adults, comfortable in the synagogue setting and in the Jewish community.  To that end, we teach, both formally and informally, and with fun, Judaic studies subjects, including but not limited to: Torah, Avodah, G'milut Chasadim, Holidays, History, Israel, and Current Events. In addition, we teach the phonetic reading of Hebrew,  Hebrew language through prayer, Torah reading, leading of a Shabbat service, and an introduction to modern Hebrew.

Periodically, we engage in activities in the Social Hall or elsewhere.  For several holidays, we arranged different stations for the students to experience different things.  For example, at Tu B'Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, we planted parsley (to be ready for Pesach), tasted fruits of Israel, read stories.  At Chanukah, we ate edible menorahs and played dreidl for peanuts.

On Sunday mornings, our students study Torah, Avodah, and G'milut Chasadim (our ethics, our spirituality and our peoplehood), as well as holidays, life cycle events, music and art.  The Chai Curriculum consists of seven levels.  Each level has a theme and includes 27 lessons: nine each of Torah, Avodah and G'milut Chasadim.  Each lesson gives the instructor guidance as to content and offers varied activities and a complete lesson plan.  Activities might include skits, stories, poems, imaginary trips and other challenges.  The first group that used Level 5 learned what a Prophet is and discussed what it would take to be a modern day prophet.  Challenged to come up with a “help-wanted” ad for a contemporary prophet, they created a video commercial for  1-800-Prophets.com.

Besides the Chai curriculum, on Sundays students study the holidays as they occur.  We are attempting to create grade-level specific topics so that the study of holidays is different each year, and age appropriate.  History beyond the Bible is studied in the upper grades; Israel is encountered in every grade.  There is a music teacher who comes about twice a month; students engage in art projects related to the material being covered.
Future goals for curriculum development include seeing that each grade has a kitchen opportunity at least once a year: challah baking, matzah baking, other holiday foods.  In addition, we'd like to see that each grade has an age-appropriate field trip opportunity each year.

The Hebrew program that we use is called Mitkadem.  Teaching Hebrew through prayer, it is individually paced (although not self-taught).  Within a classroom, with teacher guidance, each student is able to proceed at a comfortable rate without being rushed by others or feeling frustrated by waiting for others to catch up.  The program consists of 23 Ramot (or levels); the first two are letter and vowel recognition, and may be completed by the end of second grade.  Once students start attending on Wednesdays, they proceed through Levels 3-23, which teach them the Hebrew of Shabbat, holiday, and home prayers.  There's a listening station, vocabulary words to cut and keep, and other activities.  Nobody has to sit still!!

For the second half of our Wednesday sessions, the students rotate through three other activities: leading a service, Torah chanting with trope (the melody guiding marks), and modern Hebrew.  We have done such things as tracing our bodies on butcher paper, and labeling the body parts in Hebrew, drawing Hebrew letters with sidewalk chalk in the parking lot in nice weather, and practicing in the sanctuary so that students gain familiarity with being at the bima (the stage or altar).