Some toys display Hebrew letters, several puzzles have Jewish holiday themes, and many of the pictures decorating the walls are based on Jewish stories. A stuffed Torah joins the usual assortment of plush toys.
Artfully weaving Jewish culture and tradition into a playful environment, Gan Haverim preschool in Vallejo opened its doors in September at Congregation B’nai Israel in Vallejo. Two years in the making, it is the only Jewish preschool in Solano County, according to teacher-director Jenny Schwartz-Groody.
The play area of Gan Haverim, Hebrew for “Garden of Friends,” offers opportunities to play house Jewish-style, with toy challah, matzah and candlesticks — just in case the kids want to play Shabbat or Pesach, or make a Jewish home.
The result is a seamless blend of American and Jewish cultures. During circle time a visitor is as likely to hear little voices piping the strains of such standards as “Old MacDonald” as “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem.”
“When we started the school,” says Schwartz-Groody, “we didn’t want to say, `This is the Jewish part of the day, and this is the secular part of the day.’ It’s very integrated.”
Of course, some days have more of a Jewish focus, particularly around holidays. For instance, for Simchat Torah, teachers told kids about how a kosher Torah is written. They explained that the scribe must not write with a modern pen, but carve a pen from the feather of a kosher bird, grind his own ink and then carefully write the sacred letters.
Following the school’s experiential approach that allows children to learn through hands-on activities, teachers gave each of the 2-to-5-year-olds a feather and encouraged them to paint their own way, “just to get the feeling of what it would be like to write with a feather,” says Schwartz-Groody. “It was a different kind of painting experience — most of them tried to paint with the fluffy end of the feather.” But such activities make culture and religion come alive for kids.
Schwartz-Groody is quick to add, however, that the school is not solely Jewish in orientation. Because Thanksgiving is an important American family holiday, she says, Gan Haverim’s kids prepared for it by planting a fall vegetable garden of radishes, beets, carrots, and spinach that was used in their Thanksgiving party meal, when children talked about sharing and being thankful, and were reminded that “Thanksgiving is the American version” of Sukkot.
During Sukkot, kids at Gan Haverim enjoyed a special treat of lunching in the sukkah built in B’nai Israel’s courtyard. “They really liked it,” says Schwartz-Groody. “It was a lot of fun because they had helped decorate it with paper fruits” they had made themselves.
Gan Haverim, which has just eight students right now, is licensed to accept 30, and calls are currently coming in from interested families “We’re hoping to attract more children,” says Schwartz-Groody. The school is planning to hire three more teachers for an adult-to-child ratio of 1:7.
Housed at the synagogue, the school provides children with three rooms, a courtyard and room to roam in its large outdoor area with trees and grass.
Although kids are expected to bring their own lunch, the school provides snacks. All food provided by the school and brought into the building must be dairy or pareve, according to the synagogue’s requirements. Reinforcing their teaching methods, Gan Haverim teachers talk to kids about kosher laws by asking them to look for the little symbols on their food packages as they eat.
Gan Haverim’s educational philosophy is “discovery-based,” says Schwartz-Groody, emphasizing that the philosophy involves “giving the kids the materials and seeing what they do.
“Activities are not `cut-and-paste'” projects already designed to end in a planned result like the familiar rows and rows of identical construction paper Thanksgiving turkeys most adults remember making in school. Instead, we “let children do what they want to without any kind of modeling” by adults so kids can arrive at their own outcomes, she says.
The school, at 1256 Nebraska St., offers a full-day activity program for children of working parents and operates year round, Mondays through Fridays, from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Children can register to come three, four or five days a week, for either part-or full-day sessions. Tuition for a three-day week of eight-hour days is $85 per week. For further information, call (707) 557-7221.