Gathering Sparks at Gan Ideal Preschool Summer Camp
Gathering Sparks at Gan Ideal Preschool Summer Camp
When Adam and Chava (Eve) were sent out of Gan Eden, all the sparks of Jewish souls were scattered throughout the world. Since the creation of the Jewish nation, we were commanded to gather all these sparks and help them to become elevated.
When Gan Ideal was developed, the goal was to help all Jewish children learn about our lustrous history and to instill pride in being Jewish. Baruch Hashem, our first season was extremely successful! Our theme of Jewish Pride was intertwined with learning brachot, learning mitzvot, and learning about the chagim.
The children learned and developed so many preschool skills including fine motor, gross motor, sharing, and patience, just to name a few. We squeezed grapes to learn about the Bracha (blessing) we make on grape juice and learned the mitzvah of being happy and making others happy. We colored cards and gave them, along with flowers, to the Federation Mahjong ladies, brightening up their day. To sum it up, we had an amazing first season!
Thank you to our fantastic staff at the Federation for all your support, and to our talented counselors, Tsipora and Shoshana, for all your hard work and dedication to the campers. And of course, thank you to all the parents and children for joining and participating in Gan Ideal!
We gathered many sparks and were zocheh to even see Kibbutz galuyot, with campers from all around the globe joining our Gan, from South Bend, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and even Eretz Yisrael.
We look forward to running the camp next year and continuing to gather as many sparks as we can!
Mina Cowen
Director of Gan Ideal
ganideal@thejewishfed.org