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Popular Israeli Story Teaches Kindergarteners about the Power of Teamwork

Students in kindergarten white are reading and learning about the popular Israeli story “Eliezer Va’hagezer” (“Eliezer and the Carrot”) by Levin Kipnis. The story teaches students not only the power of teamwork—a man finds an enormous carrot growing in his garden and needs the help of many characters to pull it out of the ground—but also many new Hebrew vocabulary words. “When learning this story, the students have an opportunity to hear Hebrew spoken by native Israelis, since we watch a cartoon of the story spoken only in Hebrew,” explains teacher Irit Daly. “The story exposes them to Israeli culture and also taps into our core values of kindness and service, demonstrating that acts of kindness and service can be performed in small, everyday situations.”
 
As a culminating activity, kindergarteners reenacted the story, choosing to play the parts of the various characters (grandfather, grandmother, dog, cat, and mouse) and creating props and costumes. Following their performances, the class talked about how it was the little mouse that makes the difference, “validating that we can all make a difference, and that we should not underestimate our own strength and the strength of others,” adds Ms. Daly. MORE PHOTOS
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