Our blogging has fallen behind. Let me tell you what we did last Sunday (January 27th).  In addition to having the B'nai Mitzvah-nics present their Bible stories and get some suggestions --  in general they all need to flesh out the stories and add some a) interpretation to the story and b) explain what it means to them.  We'll provide a few suggestions for the former and you can help them find just what they want to say about the latter.
     We watched a video of the 2009 B'nai Mitzvah ceremony to give the kids a visual taste of what their own celebration would be like. I don't think they had previously seen themselves, in imagination, up on the stage presenting their work to the community. It was very useful to see the video.
     The class decided to do their social action project as a group and focused on the issue of gun violence.  This has a lot of interesting aspects and we are beginning to find out 1) which organizations/groups, locally and nationally, are concerned with gun violence so the project will not just be the kids sending a letter to their senator. We will be able, perhaps, to link up with one of the anti-gun groups; 2) find out the extent of gun violence, i.e. the number of shooting in schools and the number of shootings of children especially every year; 3) we talked about the possibility of introducing the discussion in their own schools in the wake of Sandy Hook, but no decision was taken; 4) one of the kids is also going to find out about the NRA and what arguments are advanced in favor of owning guns, including assault weapons and what is the current status of the anti-assault weapons law that was allowed to expire a few years ago.
     Although much of this will be done in class by the entire group, you might want to get involved in this critical issue.  A classroom suggestion is for us to watch the movie Bowling for Columbine. None of the kids knew much about this first of the school shootings and none of them had seen the movie. This would be a good opportunity for the parents to get involved with us. I'll write you separately about seeing the movie.