An important part of RMBA's mission is helping our students find personal connections and meaning with the land of Israel. Our juniors and seniors are encouraged to think about spending a gap year in Israel before starting college in order to concertize that relationship with their homeland. During the months of November and December, we welcome representatives from many gap year programs who come to share Torah with our students and highlight the benefits of taking that year of growth in Israel. This week we had the privilege to host Aish Gesher, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and Midreshset HaRova. We're excited to host a total of nearly a dozen such programs over the next few weeks.

Sand and stars, glitter, and patterns! These are some of the cool activities that Morah Aviva's ECE4 class was busy with this week. In honor of Hashem’s promise to Avraham, they made their own sand and star cooperative mural representing the stars in the sky as all of us - we are all Avraham’s children, Bnei Yisrael! They also painted rainbows as an ending to their previous unit on Parshat Noach. In addition, they went glitter crazy for letter “G” and of course chose the color “Green”.

This week in Ms. Morrison's fourth grade class students had a special guest speaker, Head of School Rabbi Silvestri came to visit the class and read one of his favorite poems. Rabbi Silvestri chose the poem Sara Stout by Shel Silverstein. He explained that each one of the poems written by this poet has a secret message or moral hidden in it. The students really enjoyed having him read and loved deciphering the moral of the poems. Next week, they will have one more special guest. Can you guess who it will be?

Students in Ms. Schneider's fifth grade class conducted three experiments this week to help illustrate Newton's Three Laws of Motion.

Morah Tsippi's ECE2B class learned all about transportation in connection to Parshat Lech Lecha this week because Hashem told Avraham to GO! The class explored various ways they can travel and Morah explained that Avraham did not have these luxuries - so he had to go by camel! They also made a special book with transportation prints.

In second grade Ms. Morrison is so proud of her students for rolling up their sleeves and tackling big words and hard books. Every day, students pick a book and read to a classmate!

This week third graders in Mr. Simon's class went Back to the Future. They studied subject-verb tenses of past, present and future. Students learned to distinguish between the verb tenses and how to create grammatically correct sentences based on time. They also started reading the non-fiction book Lisa of Willesden Lane. This is an inspiring true story about one little girl's escape from the Holocaust to become a concert pianist against all odds. The class is reading one chapter per day as a class.

Students in Morah Oshrat's second grade Judaic Studies class reinforced their chumash skills this week by playing a memory game. They learned and reviewed the shorashim (root words), the techiliyot (beginnings), and sofiyot (endings) for Parshat Lech Lecha, both this week's parsha and the one they are studying in class.