The Day School has a rich program in music, drama, and the arts, and one of the things that makes this rich program unique, is the collaborative planning that goes on to create links between Jewish studies and the arts.

Throughout the year, students learn songs in music for each approaching holiday, and songs that connect to curricular units that are being taught in the Hebrew classroom. The Hebrew songs show the students the continuity of their learning across disciplines.

Similarly, when exploring a Shabbat unit in second grade, students create Shabbat ritual items in the art room: a challah tray or challah cover, a kiddush cup or candle sticks. And often, this project involves an artistic exercise of creating a still life drawing of a Shabbat table. With older students, when Israeli eighth graders come to visit our school for a week, the art teacher devises an art activity that invites the bi-national combined eighth grade to express themselves artistically. In 2007, this project was the creation of a graffiti wall, which featured the name of each student, in Hebrew or English, with bold and light strokes, bright and subdued colors, shouting out and whispering the names of this year's Mifgash participants.

Preparing for Tu B'Shevat, the drama teacher might do an improvisation exercise about planting, again demonstrating to the students the wholeness of their learning. And the seventh grade poetry reading evening features poems in Hebrew as well as in English much to the delight of the performers and their audience.

These experiences enter the students' senses and the integration via the different modalities strengthen student learning. For students who particularly enjoy music, art and drama, they also create special happy associations.

Reinforcement across curricular areas demonstrates the faculty's awareness that we all share responsibility for our students' Jewish education. It takes a village -- or a whole day school community, to be more precise!

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