To Shlomit With Love

My boys rushed off to school today full of excitement for their last day! Yes, their two month summer break begins tomorrow and my two month attempt to juggle card and album orders with summer holiday entertainment starts too. Fun, fun, fun! Actually, I enjoy the boys being home (when they are not at each other tooth and nail!) and I especially enjoy not having to get up at 6:30am each morning to get them out of bed and ready for school.

We have lots planned after they have finished their upcoming three weeks at summer camp and I look forward to displaying the photos here. In the meantime, I am happy to show you the album I made for our wonderful Kitah Bet (Year 2) teacher on behalf of my youngest son's class and the Parents' Committee.

There was very little budget to work with but I managed to find a lovely deep purple ring binder in a local store. I cut out a paper version of our teacher with her dark curly hair, reading to some of her students. As the school that both my boys go to is a school where secular and religious students are educated together, I have illustrated one boy, to the right of the teacher, wearing a kippa (skullcap) to fulfill the customary requirement that his head be covered at all times, whilst his friend with the brown curly hair is bareheaded. Two girls are also sitting with the teacher and they all look like they are enjoying whatever she is reading to them.

The gold lettering on the cover says 'To Shlomit with love from the children of Kitah Bet Shaked. 2009-2011.' I finished it all off with a bright orange spotted ribbon, which went beautifully with the purple background.

Another parent designed this gorgeous page (below) for each student in the class to fill in. We asked them to write down what they had learnt from their teacher over the two years she has taught them, what they wished for her over the summer and the year ahead and, finally, there was a box for each child to draw a picture of their experiences in the classroom. I photographed my son's page.

Shlomit has been a truly amazing teacher to my son for two years and we will really miss her. She seemed delighted with the album when I presented it to her and I heard that she took it into school the next day to show it to the other teachers in the staff room. Several of them came to compliment me on my work later that day. Shlomit herself sent me an e-mail telling me that she absolutely loves her album. It couldn't have been made for a better teacher.