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On Tuesday, in honor of Veterans Day, TDSA welcomed Lt Col. Michael Bram, a retired Air Force Chaplain and the husband of our Middle School Social Studies Teacher to our school. Lt Col. Bram spoke to the eighth graders and kindergarten students about his experiences as a Chaplain in the Air Force. He brought in pictures and the students were able to hear about the many things he did to help other Jews in the armed forces. It was a valuable learning experience for all involved!

This year TDSA has been focusing on the Core Value of Hakaras Hatov (Gratitude). What day better than Veteran's Day to show our gratitude to our courageous veterans and all they do for our country! The kindergarteners participated in a step by step drawing lesson on how to draw a soldier. Then, they wrote a thank you message for a Veterans. These drawing were handed out to Veterans at the VA Hospital. Thank you to Captain Danny Minkow, an Airforce Veteran, for distributing them

In STEAM class, the third grade boys put on their architect hats. With computer paper and books, the boys tried to construct bridges that would be strong enough to hold pennies. By using circular shoring to more evenly distribute the weight they were able to increase the amount of pennies their bridges could hold. This activity was fun and engaging and served as a solid introduction to the mechanics of force and weight distribution.

Over the last few weeks, Ms. Bradberry's second grade girls have become experts on the elements that make a sentence complete. Last Friday, the demonstrated their mastery of sentence structure by becoming Sentence Surgeons! They dressed up as doctors and performed surgery on sentence fragments to create full sentences! The girls can't wait to put their new mastery to work expressing their thoughts and ideas in writing!

In honor of Atlanta hosting the Shabbos Project this past Shabbos, TDSA hosted a guest of their own. Jewish singer Eitan Katz came to TDSA for an Erev Shabbos Kumzitz with our middle school and fourth grade students. The atmosphere was incredible and the students went into Shabbos uplifted.

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!