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An Update from Mizel's executive director, Amanda Anderson



Mizel Jewish Day School, founded as Heritage Academy in 1975, provides an outstanding educational program for pre-K through 5th-grade students. Rooted in Jewish traditions and values, the general studies and Judaic studies curricula foster critical thinking, collaboration, character, and compassion. As a Jewish Day School, Mizel JCDS is home to a diverse community of students: Jewish, Interfaith, and other backgrounds.


Our small class size allows our teachers to educate the whole child, meeting the social, emotional, and academic goals while providing a safe, healthy, engaged, supported, and challenging environment for our students. 


Our campus is unique. We have monthly programming opportunities with the residents of Zarrow Pointe, the retirement home for independent as well as healthcare residents. The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art provides opportunities for students to view age-appropriate exhibits, as well as ritual and artistic activities. Liberators' Park is a beautiful outdoor space for student exploration and nature programs with such partners as Up With Trees. Daily, the school playground is a space for exercise and socialization. 


If you would like more information or to schedule a tour, please email aanderson@mizelschool.org or call 918-494-0953. You can also find more information about Mizel JCDS at www.mizelschool.org


Here's what WE did

in January 2023

Gym instructor is Adam Weingarten

Are you Stretching? Doing fitness exercises? Sports? Restorative time?


Well, guess what? Mizel students are doing all of that in a typical gym class.


The students spend 30-40 minutes in the P.E. program. They warm up, stretch, and then begin the real sport or exercise.


You know kids..very active, maybe a little sweaty They need a cool down to get ready for their next class.


January has been team sports and strategy games. You know. Capture the flag, dodgeball, basketball, soccer, and kickball. There is no Charlie Brown at Mizel. Every student gets selected for a team.


There are the fundamentals: dribbling a basketball, running drills, working with their team members.


 During cool down time students listen to relaxing music, while they practice breathing and meditation. This helps prepare and focus students for the rest of the school day.  


Our Pre-K students mimic the basic structure of gym class but at their level. They play games like duck-duck-goose, redlight /greenlight, What Time Is It Mister Bear?, Sharks, and Minnows, Freeze Tag, and much more! 


P.E. games and sports help students with hand-eye coordination and motor skills.  

Mizel Mealmakers with

Chef Veronica Berkowitz


Mizel School has introduced a Culinary Program for all students.  It’s about menu planning, prep work, learning to read recipes, creating foods and enjoying the foods they make. 

 

Students explore different foods, textures and skills. The reward is in the tasting afterwards!

 

Pre-K students are focused on dexterity and fine motor skills. A popular classroom assignment involved taking gram crackers and turning them into fire trucks and ladders, while they learned about the importance of the work of essential community workers. Older Pre-K students have started practicing their skills with plastic training knives.

 

Kindergarten students moved on to the BIG KITCHEN, where they learned how to use knives to make the yummy foods they enjoyed. Some students even learned to use the industrial dishwasher. No excuse for not helping wash those dishes at home!

 

1st graders are eager to learn new things and explore foods. In the Big Kitchen, they share their culinary creations with the teachers and the JCC staff. The students are still using practice knives until spring when they will be introduced to real kitchen knives. 

 

2nd and 3rd grade students are creating wonderful appetizers and discussing what to make for the end-of-the-year restaurant event. They are learning about our new oven and are very excited about our brand-new refrigerator! Students love the compliments they are receiving on the food they make.

 

Mizel students are helping to prepare school lunches. The goal for this program is to learn the importance of creating healthy balanced meals.  This program encourages planning meals with one fruit, one vegetable, one grain and a protein. That plate looks just right for lunch or dinner.

 

These are lifelong lessons to prepare our future citizens to understand the importance of good nutrition and how to create delicious and healthy meals.

Music Class Instructor is Moreh Adam Weingarten


Mizel Students Tune Up

in Music Class 



“A child who sings

is a happy child.”



At Mizel, children sing their hearts out. They are preparing for

Tu B’shevat and Passover by learning new songs.

 

Students are singing “Hameira” (Josh Warshovsky), “Mishpatim” (Shabbat song), “Od Yavo” and “Olam Chesed”. While they sing, students learn what each songs means and how they can sing together.

 

Then they add different instruments to singing. This year students have enjoyed Xylophones, Ukeleles, hand drums, and various percussion instruments.

 

What do instruments teach students? They learn rhythm, beat and dynamics. Students are beginning to learn how to read rhythm notations. Xylophones help students practice scales and melodies, and how to locate specific notes.


Going forward, it is anticipated that students will learn to play some of the songs they are singing. That would be amazing.

 

The arrival of Ukuleles was an exciting moment!! Now students are learning basic Ukulele chords. Imagine learning how to tune instruments. This is big time for our music program.

 

Stay “tuned” for more music and your opportunity to see and hear the magic of music from Mizel students. Exploring and expanding the students’ repertoire of Jewish and secular music is the goal for second semester.

2nd & 3rd Grade

Learning with Morah

Carol Adams


Variety Is The Spice Of The Classroom

The 2nd and 3rd classroom is a location for “something different every day.”


Students are reading Fables…stories with animal characters which teach a moral lesson. Reading Aesop’s fables has provided the focus on moral lessons learned in The Lion and the Mouse and The City Mouse and the Country Mouse.


Ask a 2nd or 3rd grade Mizel student and they will let you know the moral lessons they learned in those stories.

 

Turning from literature to math, what do you know about “place values”? Once again, those students understand that 123 uses the hundreds place (1), the tens place (2) and the ones place (3). The students participated in a Timed Test having to do with addition, subtraction and multiplication. Recording the results in their journals demonstrated the incredible progress they were making.

 

They will be ready for algebra and calculus when they go on to middle and high school!

 

It is reported that Science is the 2nd and 3rd students’ favorite subject. Recently studying fossils, the students learned that there are cast fossils, mold fossils and trace fossils. Linking the fossils to the plants and animals that existed at the same time as these fossils was very exciting.

 

On to an art project using what students learned about fossils, they created their own fossil by placing sea shells in plaster of paris. 

 

Let’s all go back to 2nd and 3rd grade so that we can have as much fun in school as our Mizel students.


Morah Emily Carpenter

is our Librarian too!


Yes, We Have a Library



In a world of computers and digital life, a library of books still plays an important role in a school. The beauty of a room full of colorful books that you can touch, open, and read is not a place of the past.

 

Take Mizel School’s library as an example. Mizel students have checked out more than 500 books this school year. The new digital checkout system launched this past fall has made reading an enjoyment for students and their families.

 

Back in the day, many libraries used a system of cards placed alphabetically in boxes. Mizel students have experienced a library with the Dewey Decimal System, shelf markers, and an alphabetical system to find the perfect book to take home and read.

   The Arts with

Morah Emily Carpenter


Why Take Art Class?

 

Art class develops students’ skills with materials, technique and fine motor coordination.

 

Students have been gaining knowledge of shapes, how to create multiple layers with acrylic paint and older students are applying perspective to create a “bird’s eye view” of a melting snowman in oil pastels.

 

Add this to patterns, texture, shapes and lines, students used woven felt to make mittens and “Bear-y” warm sweaters.

 

Art class coordinates with other classes to broaden students’ ability to think creatively and problem solve.

STEM Experiences with Morah Emily Carpenter 


STEM Is Not A Plant


In STEM class, we are focusing on Big Questions.

 

Younger students are studying shape recognition and using tangrams, pattern blocks and 3D shape models to create and build challenges.

 

Tangrams are like building blocks. They are Chinese geometric puzzles cut into 7 pieces which can be rearranged. Tangrams teach spatial relations and build stronger problem-solving abilities.

 

Students enjoy challenging each other in tangram races and using shapes to design new puzzles.

Morah Lauren Drover

& Morah Chelsea Sexton are our Pre-kindergarten masters!



There is Magical Learning

in Pre-K Classes


The month of January provided opportunities for students to be creative, work on literacy and math skills, delve into the world of ice, read, write and PARTY!!

 

Learning about the winter season provided students the chance to create snowflakes, learn about words beginning with “snow”, write their names with “snow” shaving cream and learn about the various types of winter weather.

 

Students painted snowmen, created sparkling snowflakes to decorate the classroom, and made snowflakes out of marshmallows. (YUM)

 

Learning about ice, the Pre-K students experimented with homemade popsicles and used colored ice cubes to create beautiful artwork.

 

Using literacy and math skills, students turned their world into the world of the movie and Broadway hit, FROZEN. They learned elements of stories, characters, settings, plots, and solutions for making it all happen. They came to class in costumes, took a ride on the reindeer Sven and acted out various parts of the story.

 

In STEM lab (YES, even in Pre-K there is STEM) they honed their engineering skills and critical skills by building ice castles.


There was time for PARTYING, with balloons, party hats, and the excitement of welcoming in the New Year. 


Games, books, math skills, snowflakes, to eating marshmallows and pretzel snowflakes…well, you get it. Mizel Pre-K classes make learning exciting and full of fun.

Morah Alin Avitan


Hebrew! What's that all about?


 Alin Avitan, the Hebrew/Judaica

teacher and teaches all 45 Mizel students. 


The Pre-K/Kindergarten programs, titled Hebrew Around The World or Jewish Interactive, begin on Day One to teach those little guys and girls Hebrew , holidays and culture.


Never too young to use a Smartboard, students view the video lessons and interact with the programs on the Smartboard. Just watch them dance and sing in Hebrew!!!


Alin refers to this as Joyful Jewish Learning!


The nationally recognized 1st through 5th grade program, titled iTalam, is an ever evolving curriculum for more advanced Hebrew, holidays and culture.


Each year, Alin attends a workshop for new iTalam curriculum

during which she meets multiple times with other Hebrew/Judaica teachers throughout the world who are learning this program.


On Monday and Thursday mornings, students 1st grade and up meet in the Sherwin Miller Museum model sanctuary to practice morning Hebrew prayers. By 5th grade graduation, Mizel students offer their graduation speeches in Hebrew and English. They have learned to read, write and converse in Hebrew.  This is exactly the approach to providing Mizel students with an early learning dual language program.

I

 Around the world, companies acknowledge that candidates who have learned a 2nd language are better at problem-solving, have improved memory, and think creatively in a world that is more interconnected and interdependent.


Mizel School has invested financially in bringing iTalam to its students. Each school year, approximately $100 per student is spent on the new Hebrew/Judaica materials.



Morah Mary Rothman & Morah Toby Hurewitz

lead our Kindergarten

& 1st-grade classes!


More Than The 3 R’s

 


Kindergarten: Kinder (children) and Garten (garden)

 

Planting seeds in the garden of Kindergarten translates into Reading and Math skills. Mizel students are always getting ready for what is ahead for them.

 

In Kindergarten, students learn about consonant and vowel sounds and how these blend for writing and reading. Students learn “sight words” such as “one, two, three”. They explore adding more detail to their art and other topics.

 

Kindergarten students are learning in math to go from the concrete to the abstract. These math principles help them to perform calculations and solve problems as they progress in math.

 

1st grade students work on reading fluency and writing answers in complete sentences. They learn how to add more detail to descriptive words.

 

In math, students are solving addition and subtraction story problems.

 

The Big Vocabulary Word for January was PERSPECTIVE. Reading fairy tales and fractured fairy tales (those stories which are taken apart and then put back together) teach students that there are different perspectives for characters and authors depending on who is writing and reading the story.

 

Students read such fractured Fairy Tales as The Princess and The Pea and different versions of The 3 Pigs. Ask any Kindergarten or 1st grader about “Perspective” on those and other stories.

 

This class studied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Stories about Dr. King taught the students to treat others with dignity and respect; that all kids deserve a good education, and that there are unequal laws which Dr. King advocated changing.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please let Amanda Anderson know at (918-494-0953) or 918-720-2767 or aanderson@mizelschool.org.