The fifth through eighth graders of the Bais Yaakov Academy of Queens were excited for the annual spelling bee! First, each class competed to get a class winner. Once all the classes had winners, these girls represented their classes in the school-wide spelling bee, which took place on Chanukah this year. The girls enthusiastically cheered on their classmates, as the 14 competitors took the stage. We are so proud of each class winner: Yehudis Aronovitch, Tziri Rosenholtz, Aliza Howitt, Shalva Kobre, Noa Harris, Malka Lavner, Sarala Weiner, Shayna Mendelson, Haddassah Boehm, Esther Keller, Gabriella Koyenov, Racheli Praeger, Nechama Friedman, and Meira Schuck. They worked hard and truly showed good sportsmanship!

SKA’s new initiative, Advisory, led by the Guidance Department, has proven to be a valuable resource for our students. Small and personalized groups of girls, guided by faculty members, allow students to form close relationships with teachers and peers while providing guidance and support. Each month has a theme that is relevant and interesting.

At HALB Lev Chana, our teachers are always looking for fun, innovative, and multi-sensory ways to facilitate the learning of new information by our children. In our four-years-of-age Nursery classes, using Handwriting Without Tears as our guide, the morot introduced the children to alphabet letters through visual, auditory, concrete, and sensory experiences. For example, the children learned about quicksand for the letter Q: They looked at, felt, and combined three ingredients – cornstarch, sand, and water – and reported their observations while their morot encouraged them to make connections to prior knowledge. “It looks dirty and black,” “It was grainy and felt like porridge,” “It felt like the ooblik from last week” were some of their remarks.

Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe just celebrated the conclusion of the wonderful V’Taheir Libeinu Tefilah Program for the sixth to eighth grades.  The purpose of this program was to enhance the t’filos of the talmidim by having them refrain from any talking during Shacharis and Minchah for one full month.  The boys were treated to hot cocoa twice a week during breakfast for their efforts.

MTA took second place at the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) Hack-A-Thon, held on Wednesday, January 29, at Yeshiva University. The event brought together 170 students from 18 different schools, who were divided into teams and given five hours and the necessary computer hardware to develop solutions that address environmental problems.