Sukkot with the Kitah Gimmel Yeledim

Sukkot--the Time to be Happy . . .

     (Today, October 8, the children recalled some of their favorite holiday activities.  We sat down during lunch and chatted about all the good times of the past week or so.  We especially loved the dancing and the flag-waving of Simchat Torah! Below is a synopsis of some of our pre-YomTov activities, with a collection of our comments.  Enjoy!) 

      As soon as Yom Kippur was over, it was time to think about the joy of Sukkot.  We painted a box to represent a sukkah.  When it dries, we will put toy people inside it.  We will collect leaves and small branches for the schah, the open sukkah roof.

      We prepared our Sukkah decorations a few days earlier.  We used pipe-cleaners, beads and pine-cones. One boy said pine-cones grow on the ground; another child said they grow on trees.  We have to figure this out.

      The Morot shared several stories.  We also learned two new songs.  Our favorite is To the Sukkah, We Will Bring . . .because we can change the words.  We used toy foods to "act out" the story-line of the song.
 Here are some of the items we would bring to the sukkah:
Ari S:  mac and cheese
Noa:  cookies
Leiba:  lollipops
Ari E:  fruit
Shaya:  hot dogs
Henia and Pearl:  fish sticks
Sam:  apples
Shlomit:  chocolate
Yoni:  water
Rami:  ice cream and pizza
Levi:  vanilla ice cream
Reed:  fruit, apples and bananas
Hannah:  grapes
Ruth:  watermelon
Mortimer:  strawberries

     We created flags, too.  We painted and glued, and then we admired our photos.  We danced a practice  hakafa with our flags in our classroom.  We're ready to sing and dance on Simchat Torah!

Chag Samayach!

Morah Susan and Morah Sterny