By: Rachel Ben Menachem, Educational Exchange coordinator

The highlights of the exchanges this year- songs! Each class will send 3 songs a year to the partner class, sang by the children and documented as video or audio files. At the same time, each class will get 3 songs a year sang by the partner.

The students will learn songs from each other, will feel the other through melody, words, rhythm, tone and atmosphere. Songs hold also the personality and culture. Singing the paired class song is feeling the otherness and let our senses be influenced .

Virginia Satir writes:
"I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made. "
Children can, at least, hear their partners voices, see the video picture, feel the energy, have some contact!

The teachers build the songs` curriculum by creating contact as well through skype or phone or videoconference. They discuss the songs themes and context.

The songs exchange will be accompanied by personal work like writing and drawing, as part of the song theme study. At the end of the year we want each class to sing the 6 songs each class knows and do it together simultanously with the paired class through video conference or by using the songs video disc as presentation, to which one can join