Spotlight

On Monday, Rabbi Schusterman came to speak to the Middle School Girls in honor of Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan next week. He spoke about Rachel Imenui and how the girls can utilize the lessons of her life to enhance their own. This served as a segue to a surprising reveal as the eighth grade students broke out this year's Big Sister-Little Sister Program. Of course, Rabbi Schusterman, was "in" on the surprise.

Yom Kippur is fast approaching and to prepare for the upcoming fast day, the first grade students are making something called a Pomander, a lemon with cloves stuck into it, to help their fasting family members. The strong and yummy scent of the lemon and cloves can be very refreshing and reviving to people who are fasting on Yom Kippur. The students had fun, poking holes into the lemons with tooth pics and pushing the cloves into place! And the classrooms smelled amazing!

First Grade boys prepared themselves for Yom Kippur this past week. The class welcomed Rabbi Freundlich who shared a gripping story with the class about the power of Teshuva.

As we have eased into the school year, TDSA has started to roll out its new, exciting Enrichment Program. The goal of the Enrichment Program is to spark student curiosity and confidence. Here a group of fourth grade boys familiarize themselves with our robotics kits as they prepare to learn more about robotics and programing.

TDSA's Kitah K students and their families had a fabulous time working together to create beautiful sukkah decorations during the annual Sukkah Decoration Make and Take event. Parents, siblings and Kitah K students, cut, glued and colored chains, stars and other hanging decorations to enhance their sukkahs for the upcoming Chag! We're sure that our Kitah K boys and girls will look at their decorations with pride come Sukkos!

Every year, TDSA's hallways come to life with creative, cute and funny model sukkos! This year's Sukkah Contest is beginning and we can't wait to see what everyone makes! So get out your carboard boxes, glue, markers, crayons and playdough and prepare to wow our secret judges with your handiwork!

In honor of Rosh Hashana and the season of fall, the Kindergarteners became Apple Investigators. They measured, weighted, tasted, counted apple seeds and predicted and discovered if apples float!

Mrs. Rubin's 5th Grade math classes started their unit on dimensions and volumes with a really "out-of-the-box" activity. Using pieces of paper, they constructed boxes of different sizes and measured how much cereal each box could hold. It was a fun and unique way to visualize how the shape and sizes of boxes affect how much volume they can contain.

Before Rosh Hashana, TDSA was buzzing with excitement thanks to a visit from Let it Bee! Beekeeper Melissa explained everything about bees and making honey to our curious students! The students learned about the structure of a hive, how long bees live for, how honey is extracted and so much more! The sweet demonstration was capped off with a chance to see bees at work up close and even taste fresh honey straight from the comb!

Rabbi Alterman's fourth grade students had a hands-on lesson to understand how the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashana are organized. Rabbi Alterman explained that the short blasts are sandwiched between two long blasts. To demonstrate this, the students constructed "shofar" sandwiches with tea biscuits and different colored frostings.