Longing-for-Israel: Wow, many kids must feel you understand their struggles well. Question: Must the “combination approach” be jumpstarted FIRST by meeting the kids “b’asher hoo sham”/where they are right now, and THEN a bit of both? Or there are really no hard-and-fast rules for this?
Genrally that meeting them on their turf is the way it goes because in most cases why would they listen to you if youre talking about shabbos, they have heard it all before. They want to hear something new, different and exciting. And believe you me hearing soemone who is dressed yeshivish talk street (not bad street, just street) is very fascinating to them. Once you grab their attention and show them that your fun and interesting, then you sneak in the shabbos and the mitzvot. Again this is generally, obviously every single person is different.