This year we started the ‘Givers’ Club’ at our school at RYNJ, as a way to work with our students on their social skills, pragmatic learning, and speech and language skills. The students discuss what it means to do Chesed, and the different ways to be a Giver—donating money, working for a cause, visiting an old age home, cleaning up a park, etc. Ultimately, as a group they will pick a few projects to follow up with over the course of the year.
This month, at the younger childrens’ “Giver’s Club” meeting, the students decided to make a Chanukah toy drive their first project of the year. We brainstormed as a class all of the steps that they would need to take to put together a toy drive and talked about who might benefit from toys that we collect. They worked in small groups to make these posters and have begun to collect toys. Later this week, we will wrap the toys and make cards, which will be delivered to a children’s hospital.
During current events, the older students learned about the recent fires in Israel and voted as a class to raise money to help this cause. Every year the older students create a Chanukah carnival which they put on for the other students of SINAI during Chanukah. Working in pairs they have been working to make booths, posters, a prize table, and food court. Through this activity we have been working on building pragamatic language and critical thinking skills such as problem solving, compromise and perspective taking. In their “Givers’ Club,” the students decided to also sell food at the carnival in order to raise money to buy toys, which will be sent to Israel specifically to the community of Talmon which was effected by the recent fires.
