This week I haven't been in the Ulpan (I was on holiday in the north. It was excellent!). I am a million percent thankful to my excellent staff who carried out everything that needed to be done and more. But not only that, everything was done to a really high standard as per usual.
This week a new project begun; Family Ulpan! Until now "parts of families" came to the ulpan; Dad here, Mum not or Mother and Daughter students e.t.c but never before had a family on this scale arrived! This week brought a family of 7 to study with us. The youngest was 10 and the eldest son was 20. We prepared a family program sticking to the unique method of the ulpan, private classes, so that each member could learn at their own pace and according to their own special needs. We made sure that the material was more of less parallel in all the classes and at the end of the course we created a game between two teams. The game was similar to the game show "The amazing race", it was educational, competitive and a real experience. The two teams need to solve a riddle, perform a task and then reach the next destination. During the game the teams visited many places amongst the streets of Jerusalem, they cracked riddles (in Hebrew- of course in Hebrew) and performed various tasks that they had learnt how to do during their Hebrew course at Ulpan Aviv.
The competition helped break down the language barrier and helped them move forward with Hebrew in a fun manner and challenged them to use what they had just learned. The game was prepared especially for them and not only did they learn Hebrew through the material, they also learnt about the Jewish people; the culture, the beliefs and Jewish life in a way they never had before. We travelled to the old city and the new. We visited the house of Ben Yehuda who reinvigorated the Hebrew language and we visited the Russian compound, the Hurva synagogue; that has been renovated and returned to it's former condition and we learnt about Judaism, about the Karaites who were here in the 10th century and about Jewish life in Jerusalem in centuries gone by.
We are very pleased to host families here in our Ulpan and to build schedules which match with their needs and expectations from our courses.
Hope to see you here soon,
Osnat Rance and Ulpan Aviv
