Your children have been in Beth El for an entire school year, and yet every day, their backpacks have gone home pretty much empty.
If you didn’t know us well, you might think that your child didn’t learn anything. The reason it is hard to send home anything in the back pack is because nothing fits...
We can’t send home how they learned to find their own name on the attendance chart.
We can’t send home how they learned to serve their own snack.
We can’t send home how they became comfortable and confident in the daily routines of the classroom.
We can’t send home the amazing constructions that groups of the children built together.
We can’t send home the large mural all the children painted so beautifully together as a community.
We can’t send home the giggles of the children as they created erupting volcanos with their vinegar and baking soda experiments.
We can’t send home the mud pies created in our Mud Kitchen.
We can’t send home the caring eyes on each child as they dropped their coins in the tzedakah boxes.
We can’t send home the pride the children feel as they host Shabbat Bear for the weekend.
However, our teachers have been sending home a few things, like wet sleeves from the water table, paint speckles on faces, and muddy shoes and boots from Gan Teva. Or maybe you've heard stories of how your children have zipped their own jackets or helped others put on their jackets.
Yes, if you looked inside their backpacks, it would seem like they haven’t been learning, but if you look outside of the backpack, you will see cooperation, friendship, independence, collaboration, discovery, testing, questioning, trial and error, confidence, exploration and play.
We’d say it was a very successful year.
We will miss you and wish you a wonderful summer ahead, Ronnie and Shery
