Netivot+Shalom-+Best+Practices


 * Congregation Netivot Shalom**
 * Berkeley****,** **California**
 * Stuart Kelman, Rabbi and Cathy Shadd, Educator**

Name of funded initiative: Rimmonim

Rimmonim is a Shabbat family education program for children in grades K-2 and their parents focused on the study of core Jewish //middot// (one per month) and their application to everyday life. It also encompasses adult learning opportunities and inter-generational social action projects.
 * Brief description of the program**:


 * “Best Practices” from our experience this year**:

1. Use parents as leaders in the program. When parents lead our Shabbat morning learning sessions, not only do the children connect to the learning in a different way, but the parents experience “ownership” of the program and become more invested in it.

2. Use congregants as “guest teachers.” We had congregants lead Shabbat morning learning sessions. This links the primary age group (parents and their grade K-2 age children) with adults in the congregation whom they otherwise might not know and vice versa.

3. Design the children’s learning to be very active. The more active the children are, the more interested they are and the more they really connect with the material. Examples include: giving the children scenarios to which a //middah// can apply and they act out the scene and create and act out an ending; creating a “human board game” where the children are the board pieces and must draw cards and do various things in order to move to the next space; having the children mime a situation and the others guess what it is and how it relates to the //middah//; parents playing children and children playing parents in acting out situations to which the //middah// applies.

4. Design components for both children and adults. Our Shabbat morning program has three parts. Parents and children learn together in a “family learning” component, followed by children and adults learning in parallel but separate “children’s learning” and “adult learning.”

5. Develop social action projects to give hands-on experience. These can take place on Sundays so the range of possibilities is very broad. The learning comes to life when we do something concrete with it and the children feel very proud that they have made an important contribution.

6. Use pre-existing venues in the congregation to engage more people. When we created new study and social action opportunities (in addition to what was already happening in the shul), the attendance was low. When we decided to use structures already in place (the retreat, the annual congregational meeting, the relationship the Social Action committee had built with a neighborhood skilled nursing facility), the attendance was much better.

7. Make the program visible in the congregation. We have signs in the front windows giving the name of the //middah// of the month in English, Hebrew and transliterated, as well as have a “//middah// of the month” box in the weekly Shabbat announcement sheet discussing some aspect of the //middah.// Every newsletter carries an article about the program. Once people get what the program is about, they can talk about it with others and generate interest.

8. Hold a fall “kick-off” event and a summer “wrap-up” event to mark the beginning and the end of the year. At our fall event, the children created life-size collaged pictures of themselves with labels on various body parts naming the ways they can be used to help others and they learned songs which became our “Rimmonim” songs which we sang at the beginning and end of every session. Likewise, the collages decorated our room all year. In early July, we will have a shul-wide celebration of both Rimmonim and Shabbat B’Yachad (our Shabbat program for families with preschoolers) during services in the main sanctuary. Parents will read Torah, lead the services, and have various honors; the children will walk in the Torah Procession carrying signs they made of all the //middot// we studied this year; we will sponsor kiddush for the whole community. The children who will start K in the fall will each be given a Shabbat B’Yachad “graduation” certificate with an invitation to join Rimmonim printed on the other side. The Rimmonim children will officially welcome them into Rimmonim with a song. This is a good chance to share the program with the whole community and to invite everyone’s participation in our learning and projects next year.

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