Hey everyone!

I'm Abby Manaster, the Primary Riveii teacher for Sinai Temple. I am currently a senior at Champaign Central High School. I have been a lifelong member of Sinai Temple and am strongly considering a career in education, so I saw this job fit for me. Band, soccer and languages are among my other interests/pastimes.

My dad, Robert Manaster co-leads the class and makes my life so much easier. He has been a teacher here at Sinai in the past, so although I'm in charge of making lesson plans, he's has the experience to go about dealing with Sunday school classes. Already I feel I've learned a lot about teaching!

With October having started, things are in full swing for Primary Riveii. We have now learned about the stories of creation and Adam and Eve; we have learned a little bit about the purpose and function of the synagogue and are now learning about specific things and places in the synagogue; we have now started lesson two of our Hebrew activity book; and we have already learned about the high holidays and Sukkot!

This Sunday, we reviewed the story of Adam and Eve and talked about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We then created our own Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, gluing cut-out leaves onto a picture of a tree. They were color-coded so the bad things were red leaves and good things were orange leaves. The students thought of some really good examples and the tree will no doubt be hung up in our classroom soon!

Lesson two's keyword this week for our Hebrew activity book was dag. Most students caught on pretty well. Some had a little bit of trouble at first, but once they received individual attention from me or Robert they caught on and became very enthusiastic about it. Some kids have actually gone ahead in the book, as you may have worked with them on it at home, which I think is wonderful! Practicing and reviewing at home is by no means required, but is certainly encouraged. As far as working ahead goes, I won't stop them! To keep those kids from getting bored during class, I have them help out any classmates who may need it. I'm also in the process of finding new ways for them to approach the activities so they could challenge themselves yet still be in the same lesson with their peers.

We had a scavenger hunt around the temple today, which was a blast! I made it into a competition between two teams: both teams, I decided, would receive a prize next week, though the winning team will get the bigger prize of the two. I'm thinking the kids would look candy/chocolate of some sort, but I will have to check-up with all the parents.

As a review of Sukkot, we played a game to do with the Four Species: etrog, lulav, hadas and aravah. It was very similar to musical chairs, except we didn't have chairs at first, so things got a little wild. However, when we added chairs everything seemed to make more sense to the students and there was a wider participation.

That's my overview of the first few weeks! I'm looking forward to next week and a great rest of the Year!