About Us
Welcome to KIvunim!
We are the religious school at Congregation Kehillat Israel, a small-but-mighty synagogue in the heart of Michigan.
Here you will find out more about us, an event calendar, student forms, and school announcements.
Our religious school seeks to engage Jewish youth in a process of exploration that leads to their forming a deeply held, personally relevant Jewish identity.
Our lower group, Kitah Alef for grades K-2, engages students in hands-on learning that is influenced by the Montessori system. Students learn the Alef-Bet through the use of manipulatives, movement, and sensory activities. Torah and tefillah are learned through story telling, re-enactments, and creative play. During the pandemic, we have altered our curricular approach for Kitah Alef. Students engage in weekly Torah/Jewish story sessions. The stories serve as the basis for creative enterprises where students engage in art projects and/or re-enactments and retellings of the stories. For Hebrew, students engage in on-line study highlighting Hebrew words, English transliterations, and English translations while also writing Hebrew letters at home.
Our upper group, Kitah Bet for grades 3- b-mitzvah, engages students in project based learning around the major concepts of Hebrew/tefillah, Torah, Jewish ritual and identity, Israel, Jewish heritage/history. During the pandemic, we have altered our curricular approach for Kitah Bet to focus on 8 week “chugim” focused on various topics. So far, the topics have included:
- A unit on Torah/tanakh where students learned about little known women in Torah, siblings in Tanakh, and the challenging issues in the Torah.
- A unit on G-d where students engage the ideas of how Jews portray the divine in art, poetry, and song.
- A unit on the Jewish diaspora where students learned about the food, culture, and geography of the vast Jewish diaspora.
Schedule
Wednesday school, for grades 3- b-mitzvah, meets on zoom from 4:15-5:30pm (during the pandemic). In addition, on Wednesdays, the students learn Torah through drama with our two wonderful drama teachers, Liz Harrow and Madeline Lenski.
Sunday school, for grades K- b-mitzvah, meets on zoom from 11am to 12:15pm (during the pandemic)
Contact the school via email at kirschool@gmail.com