Volume 31 Issue 10 08 Apr 2022 7 Nisan 5782

Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Pesach

We participated in our own interactive Kornmehl Pesach Seder on Tuesday. The children all arrived at Pre-school dressed in their best Shul clothes and were eager to participate in this long-awaited Chagim. The tables looked beautiful, and the food was delicious. Each child participated in dressing up and dramatising the story. We had King Pharaoh’s and Moses characters, Yochevet, baby Moses in the basket and lots of slaves. What a triumph it was when Moses led us to the Red Sea, and it parted, and we were all led safely to freedom to the land of milk and honey. We sang, rejoiced, and ate delicious Matzah ball soup, lots of Matzah and all the traditional foods found on the Seder plate too. We had a wonderful time. Our Seder ended with the children all going on a hunt to find the Afikomen.

Dylan: King Pharaoh did not want to let his people go. He made all the Jewish people go but he did not want to. 
Drew: King Pharaoh had a hat on his face, and he had some white sandals, and I don’t know if he had a pet. He was evil. He did not let the people go. They had to work harder and harder and harder every day. 
Noam: King Pharaoh is bad and mean because he does not like the Jewish. The baby who growed up tries to let the people be free, and then all the dangerous things came.
Dylan: Wild beasts came and bugs and frogs.  
Allec: They could not make bread. They had to hurry up. No more Jewish people need to work for King Pharaoh. 

Thank you to all our wonderful parent helpers: Mrs Anna Tabachnik, Mrs Mandy Heyman, Mrs Corinne Franks, Mrs Lindy Freedman, Mrs Sharri Markson, Mrs Edith Lawton, Mrs Paula Leibowitz, Mrs Jessica Mendoza-Roth and Mr Dave Cartwright. Your help was very much appreciated by all the teachers and the children.

Representing King Pharaoh using mixed media

The children spent a few visits working on their representations of King Pharaoh. We used black markers, lead pencil and oil pastels. Later in the week, we re-visited our work and added collage paper and water colours to our art works.

Jack: Why is he angry? Because he’s not smiling.
Hugo: Maybe his engine is blue.
Jack: Maybe he wanted to watch TV and his Queen wouldn’t let him.

We spoke about why this night is different from all other nights:
Freddie: We can lean back.
Sienna: We can dip our vegetables in salt water.
Juliette: We don’t eat matzo, we eat challah.

We discussed the foods that are permissible during Pesach (Kosher l’Pesach) and those that are considered unacceptable (Chametz), always linking these traditions to the story of the Exodus from Egypt. We explained that not everyone will be following this way of eating. We played a game to reinforce the different foods and to sort them into the two categories. Afterwards we made Matzah pizzas.

Xander: Why doesn’t it rise while it’s in the oven? I like the crunchy taste.
Claudia: I like it because of the topping and because I put cheese and tomato sauce and mixed it together.
Michael: It’s very yummy!
Matteo: It’s good and has vegetables.
Ana: It tastes good because I love it!
Harriet: I like it because it has so much cheese! Tagliani’s good because of the sauce and the cheese.
Juliette: It’s good because it has ingredients on it.
Cleo: I think it’s delicious, it’s so crunchy and I love crunchy things!
Jack: It’s nice but only a bit because I only like a little bit of pizza normally.

As a team, we are constantly reflecting upon our research project – What does it mean to be Jewish? and striving to gain a greater understanding of how the children perceive and make sense of their Jewish identity. As we are in the process of exploring the story of Passover, we decided to see how the children would answer the question: Why was Pharaoh so mean to the Jewish People? 

Raphael: King Pharaoh did not like Jewish people, he brought the scary animals. 
Drew: He was mean because he needed them to build the pyramids for him. They did not have time to bake their bread, so they ate Matzah.
Teya: He is very angry with the Jewish People.

The educators have reflected upon how the children seem to externalise the concept of Judaism. They view being Jewish as something that exists outside of their immediate frame of reference. Is this because we always preface the telling of our stories around the festivals by telling the children that this all happened a very very long time ago? Or is it simply that they believe that everyone has Shabbat, Purim and Passover and therefore they do not relate these experiences to being Jewish. It is just what everyone does. We will continue to ponder and wonder about these concepts, as our research unfolds.

Happy Birthday

We wish a very happy birthday to Oscar Cohen (4), Ziggy Rosenberg (4) and Teya Weiner (3). We hope you all had a beautiful birthday celebration.