ChiKen's CheCk-In
Last weekend we had two peulot, a Chotrim (6th/7th graders) girl's sleepover and our annual Hanukkah party. Flyers were a little bit late, but phone calls were just about all made and both peulot were incredibly successful.
Of the 13 Chotrot in our region, 8 made it Saturday night, and we all had a blast. We didn't get to cram any Habo education in amidst Lindsay Lohan/Hillary Duff movies and other typical pre-teen sleepover activities, but the girls enjoyed it very much and 1st and 2nd session girls got to meet each other and we convinced at least one of them to go to camp all summer this year, so I felt it was a great success, and they seemed to agree as they're already bugging me to plan another one!
The next morning we drove the girls over to the Hanukkah party. Many of them who had RSVPed that they could only come for the sleepover decided since they were having so much fun that they wanted to stay, so our evil scheme to make them come to peulot actually worked! Mark it down guys, sleepover the night before an all ken peulah is actually quite a good strategy for making kids come to stuff.
We had a remarkable turnout to the Hanukkah peulah. The Hanukkah peulah has, in the past few years, developed a reputation for being rather boring and painful, last year we had all of 4 kids show, but this year we made Ken Yodfat history with a record number of 37 kids!
I don't know about the rest of you, maybe this may not seem like a lot to some of the larger, more active kenim, but that's huge for us.
In the 11 years I've been involved with the ken I can't remember ever having such an astounding turnout for any peulah, let alone a Hanukkah peulah. We were all pretty overwhelmed and after a few games at the beginning we spent most of the rest of the peulah making latkes and running crowd control. I got a good game of dreydle going for a while, and though we didn't get to light candles or sing songs, all of the kids seemed to have a great time. When I finally tore myself away to run off to work it was half an hour after the peulah was scheduled to end, and most of the kids were still around, just hanging out.
I don't really know what happened, or what we could have done to cause it, but suddenly our poor, little, dying ken has sprouted. We have a strong, dedicated base of chanichim who actually WANT to come to our peulot. Their energy seems to have given us all a second wind and we as a tzevet now find new and exciting challenges to face. We are beginning to conduct bimonthly formal tzevet asephot in addition to the many informal asephot we've always had, we're setting up a list serve, we're making ken shirts to try and raise some money, we've gotten permission to copy and sell the machaneh rikud cds as a fund raiser, we're sending out a monthly calendar on which we have scheduled tikun olam and some more educational-ish peulot, which have never worked out for our ken in the past but which we hope can begin to in the future.
Both of the Chicago area kenim; Ken Yodfat of Chicago and the northern suburbs and Ken Funky Ketzef of Oak Park and the western suburbs, are picking up and we hope to continue to grow and solidify our kenim in the coming months The lesson I learned from all this: Even when the ken seems like a somewhat hopeless cause, don't give up! You never know when your kids will surprise you.
We'll keep you posted
Leora Kanter
Co-Rosh Ken Yodfat
Eizor Tavor
Of the 13 Chotrot in our region, 8 made it Saturday night, and we all had a blast. We didn't get to cram any Habo education in amidst Lindsay Lohan/Hillary Duff movies and other typical pre-teen sleepover activities, but the girls enjoyed it very much and 1st and 2nd session girls got to meet each other and we convinced at least one of them to go to camp all summer this year, so I felt it was a great success, and they seemed to agree as they're already bugging me to plan another one!
The next morning we drove the girls over to the Hanukkah party. Many of them who had RSVPed that they could only come for the sleepover decided since they were having so much fun that they wanted to stay, so our evil scheme to make them come to peulot actually worked! Mark it down guys, sleepover the night before an all ken peulah is actually quite a good strategy for making kids come to stuff.
We had a remarkable turnout to the Hanukkah peulah. The Hanukkah peulah has, in the past few years, developed a reputation for being rather boring and painful, last year we had all of 4 kids show, but this year we made Ken Yodfat history with a record number of 37 kids!
I don't know about the rest of you, maybe this may not seem like a lot to some of the larger, more active kenim, but that's huge for us.
In the 11 years I've been involved with the ken I can't remember ever having such an astounding turnout for any peulah, let alone a Hanukkah peulah. We were all pretty overwhelmed and after a few games at the beginning we spent most of the rest of the peulah making latkes and running crowd control. I got a good game of dreydle going for a while, and though we didn't get to light candles or sing songs, all of the kids seemed to have a great time. When I finally tore myself away to run off to work it was half an hour after the peulah was scheduled to end, and most of the kids were still around, just hanging out.
I don't really know what happened, or what we could have done to cause it, but suddenly our poor, little, dying ken has sprouted. We have a strong, dedicated base of chanichim who actually WANT to come to our peulot. Their energy seems to have given us all a second wind and we as a tzevet now find new and exciting challenges to face. We are beginning to conduct bimonthly formal tzevet asephot in addition to the many informal asephot we've always had, we're setting up a list serve, we're making ken shirts to try and raise some money, we've gotten permission to copy and sell the machaneh rikud cds as a fund raiser, we're sending out a monthly calendar on which we have scheduled tikun olam and some more educational-ish peulot, which have never worked out for our ken in the past but which we hope can begin to in the future.
Both of the Chicago area kenim; Ken Yodfat of Chicago and the northern suburbs and Ken Funky Ketzef of Oak Park and the western suburbs, are picking up and we hope to continue to grow and solidify our kenim in the coming months The lesson I learned from all this: Even when the ken seems like a somewhat hopeless cause, don't give up! You never know when your kids will surprise you.
We'll keep you posted
Leora Kanter
Co-Rosh Ken Yodfat
Eizor Tavor
posted by Merakezet Maapilim @ 11:42 AM
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