January 31, 2025 by
Across the grades, the STEM department incorporates engineering design into its curriculum, often in order to tackle real world problems. Below, we feature examples:
January 29, 2025 by
On Friday, January 17, family members of our Pre-K class gathered to celebrate their children’s learning. Throughout the morning, students shared what they had learned and done from August through January, from Hebrew and Judaics to general studies. This Chagigat Halomedim, or celebration of learning, largely featured the students’ year-long study of identity. As Pre-K […]
November 23, 2015 by
Sometimes it feels really good to talk over difficult subjects with a group of people to whom you feel connected. For some, this is family in the traditional sense, for others its colleagues or close friends. Last week, it was our JPDS-NC community. The annual Ari Zymelman Parenting Lecture Series event gave us the opportunity […]
November 20, 2015 by
The integration of the arts into other academic disciplines provides to children important windows into the world and important languages for exploring, finding, and expressing the meaning they make of the world. True arts integration results in all students learning the skills, habits of mind, and real-world purposes of the arts while at the same […]
November 19, 2015 by
Every year, JPDS-NC has a Veterans Day program where all the students perform songs to honor and thank our veterans and service members. We asked pre-K students about their thoughts and feelings before the big show. Yael J. said, “I feel happy because I want to be on stage.” Sam S. said, “I am a […]
November 19, 2015 by
In this parasha, Yaakov flees to his uncle Lavan’s household and lives there for several years, marrying Lavan’s daughters, Leah and Rachel, and establishing a large family. The parasha begins and ends with malachim. Yaakov, on his way to his Uncle Lavan’s house, has a dream of malachim ascending and descending a ladder. He arrives […]
November 12, 2015 by
In one week, JPDS-NC will have the second annual Ari Zymelman Lecture on Parenting. As a rakezet (room parent/connector) and parent of a pre-Kindergarten student, I have heard that there were questions about who the lecture series was named after, the psychologist who will be our speaker that evening, and the topics of the lecture […]
November 12, 2015 by
In this parasha, we read about the births of Yaakov and Eisav, their growing up, Eisav selling his birthright to Yaakov, and Yitzchak’s blessings for his two sons. The parasha begins with an interesting scenario. Rivka is pregnant with her twins. The text says, “the children struggled within her, and she said ‘If this is […]
November 11, 2015 by
Rabbi David Lau, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, came to the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital recently. He came to the U.S. to learn more about Jewish life in America, and while he was here, he visited JPDS-NC and spoke with the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders about his role in the […]
November 5, 2015 by
It was a sunny Shabbat afternoon in Miami twenty years ago when I first heard the unimaginable news that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. I was spending the afternoon with a group of friends, young couples with babies or, like me, expecting our first ones. We were studying Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of […]
November 5, 2015 by
In this parasha, following the death of Sarah, Avraham purchases a burial plot and sends his servant, Eliezer, to identify a wife for Yitzchak. Eliezer finds Rivka and brings her to Yitzchak to become his wife. The very end of the parasha recounts Avraham’s death, followed by a listing of the descendants of Yishmael and […]
November 4, 2015 by
We went on the field trip to Audubon Naturalist Society because we wanted to see nature. We’ve been learning about fall in science, and we wanted to look for fall things like seeds. Before we went, we learned about who John Audubon was. He was an important person because he was a bird expert. When […]
