My Classroom Budget is Dwindling So Quickly!

How Can I Possibly Afford to Do Art for Purim, Pesah and Shavuot?!?

by Laurie Bellet

1. Watch those sales and use supplies carefully. Many craft stores have storewide sales in summer and in winter. This is your opportunity to purchase items you know you will use throughout the year, at significant discounts. Keep your eyes out each week for special items at 50% off and use store coupons for specific items that are too expensive to consider otherwise. Limit student use of luxurious supplies (select one sparkling gem; use 3 stickers; add some final gold highlights). Your students of every age will come to value your art treasures.

Developing a Community: Parents and Teachers Working Together

by Lizabeth A. Fogel

Welcome back, I hope you all had a relaxing winter vacation and are know ready to get back to work. Today I want to talk with you about working, meeting, and involving parents in their children academic lives. There are multiple ways you can involve parents: conferences, written communication, telephone conversations, discussion/workshop groups, field trips, and classroom projects.

A strong link between home and school is one way to promote and predict student success. Parent-teacher conferencing is one approach that helps strength the school-family tie. A conference can function as a way for teachers to provide information to parents about students’ academic and behavioral issues. They can then work together to develop solutions for any problems that may exist. Also, teachers can share general school and classroom information, expectations, and student accomplishments. There are many thinks you can do to prepare for a conference:

Where the Wild Things Are

by Laurie Bellet

Once again, we return to our classrooms amidst news of disaster. Save for Yom Ha-Shoah, disaster is rarely, if ever, part of our curriculum. Yet, processing cataclysm spiritually, aligning or confronting disaster and the Divine, provides us enduring moments of community with our students. Although we, as educators, are not art therapists, we can use art as spiritual process even with very young children.

For so many learners, beginning with those in kinder and primary grades, motifs from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, provide icons of immediate engagement. Viewing Maurice Sendak as a major, influential Jewish artist captures students in what I like to call a “wow!” moment. The “wild things” monsters in the book are actually representations of Sendak’s relatives, many of whom came over from Eastern Europe. The story monsters’ prominent teeth were what Sendak, the child, noticed when these relatives leaned close to kiss or pinch his cheeks. Ultimately, Max, the universally loved character, becomes king of his monsters. This is where we can journey through our own representations of Sendak style art, to explore some of the more difficult dilemmas of God in times of distress.