May your home be filled with sweetness, joy and light in your and your loved ones' eyes! Happy Rosh Hashanah

September 13th, 2015

In This Issue:

Rosh Hashana Art and Music
MJDS Adolescent Community At Work!
Meet the Shinshinim
Parent Partnership Event: Toddler and Casa
Community News
Housekeeping
MJDS Upcoming Events

Rosh Hashana Art and Music

Preparing Fruits

Magen David and Shalhevet sounded off to a sweet new year with Rosh Hashana and music inspired art classes. Both groups learned about the significance of the Shofar both to Rosh Hashana and as an instrument and made their own functioning Shofars out of cardboard and music paper. The students have also begun preparing for a sweet new year by cutting and dehydrating fruits to decorate their homes and Sukkahs.

Rosh Hashana Photo Album

Take a look at our Rosh Hashana Photo Album

The oldest Casa students went on a silent nature walk where they were tasked with listening to the natural music of the world. The walk ended in the Sensorial Garden with a discussion about the various sounds that they had heard, from squirrels chattering and crickets chirping to airplanes flying overhead, and finished with an amusing game of musical freeze tag.

You can do this at home too! To play musical freeze tag you need one person to be "it" to freeze people, and one person to be the musician who can unfreeze people by blowing an imaginary shofar (do-do-do-doooooo).

MJDS Adolescent Community At Work: Rimon Erdkinder Experience

Excited MJDS Middle School students and guides Simon and Danielle began the year with what Maria Montessori would have referred to as an Erdkinder experience. They went off site to Rice Lake and, together, as a group decided on their class guidelines, and plans for the year. Through this community building experience the students began to think about the upcoming year and what they want to accomplish and they created a plan to achieve their goals.

Kita Rimon prepares for community service at a nearby farm

They kept journals, cooked for each other, did a community service element and had fun as they engaged in what adolescents need to be doing: strenuous, meaningful work. It is though experiences such as these that they become independent, strong, thoughtful, competent, confident and resourceful.

Read next week's newsletter for students' personal account of the adventure and check out our Facebook page for photos and more.

Meet the Shinshinim

Shinshinim 2015-2016

This year MJDS is pleased to welcome Noa Bezalel and Itay Kleinman. Noa comes to us from Shoham, located in between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, and majored in History and Biology. She has taken part in the Tzofim youth movement since the fourth grade and likes to sing and hang out with family and friends in her spare time. Itay comes to us from Ramat Gan, neighbouring Tel Aviv, and majored in Physics and Computer Science. He loves hiking across Israel and will be joining the Israeli Air Force after his year as Shinshin to begin the Pilot Training Course. They are both so excited to be here in Canada and teamed up with MJDS.

Parent Partnership Event: Toddler and Casa

Do you want to know what your child is doing all day in the Toddler or Casa environment? Do you have questions that your child seems unable to answer? Do you know what Circle Time and the 3 hour work period are all about? Do you want to step into your child's shoes and get your hands onto the mysterious materials?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you need to come to our Curriculum Night on Thursday September 17^th at 7:30pm. Childcare can be available if you RSVP to regina@mjds.ca.

At MJDS we believe that you are an integral part in your child's education, and we hope to see all of you on Thursday. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child's class email account: zohar@mjds.ca mazal@mjds.ca gefen@mjds.ca parpar@mjds.ca

Community News

Mazal Tov to the Joffe family on the birth of their new baby boy. He is brother to Julie in Kita Mazal and son to proud parents Samantha and Marc.

MJDS has grown too! We are pleased to announce that we have reached a new record of students enrolled at MJDS. We begin the year with 126 students and welcome 6 more in January for a total of 132 students!

Housekeeping

Administration

Please ensure that you have updated your RENWEB account for each of your children attending MJDS. This includes your current home and work addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts, and child's medical information. This is required by law and provides valuable information if there ever was an emergency. Download the instructions here.

Pick up your hard copy of the MJDS Calendar in the office.

Early Room

Drop off begins at 8 am in the playground. If there is inclement weather students are to be dropped off at the new French Room at the end of the hallway on the left hand side. Please avoid entering the classrooms as this is the teacher's preparation time.

Casa Pick-up Time