A New Beginning

Tomorrow's lesson is on Genesis and Creation. I will also be introducing the number 1 and the first Book of the Bible by means of a plywood block model that will sit on the bookshelf looking like a book - a draft copy of the first of many. It will read on its cover something like this:
תורה ספר אֶחָד

בראשית
Genesis

בראשית ברא אלהים
את השמים ואת הארץ

And it will have a colorful spine as noted in the prior post.

I have a 2 ft by 4 ft blowup of this diagram - I wonder what I will do with it or how much I will read for sound. I am not into reductionism when teaching. Slow and steady in a rich environment - that's how to grow.

The organization of the books of the Bible

The topic of the books of the Bible is a very complex one. (See for example the link at the left) North American Protestants are not much aware of the issues:

• that there are several versions of the canon; 
• that the word "scriptures' as used in the New Testament did not mean necessarily the 'Old Testament' in the order we have it today, and certainly did not include the New Testament; 
• that the Hebrew Scriptures are in a different order from the Old Testament as used in the churches today.  

A preliminary image of a model that eventually may illustrate the whole and the many parts is here. I hope to construct (with some capable help from my friends) a set of blocks that represent this 'library' and see where the new set of blocks might lead us to teach the books of the Bible to the Sunday School.

Imagine these attached to a set of blocks and on a shelf - looking like a shelf full of books. (Note how the books would be organized right to left.)

Guess what's on for Sunday School tomorrow?

Cookies - The letters are designed to be inscribed but cookie dough is difficult to inscribe in! You can just make out בית in the upper left corner and there are lots of alefs. When you cut out alefs, you leave diamonds - so there are lots of diamonds too. (It took me a while to figure that one out.) Tomorrow for the older students there is a new alef-bet book.

New draft of alef-bet book

This should be a lot of fun even for adults. Even for those who have never seen the Hebrew alef-bet before. But you won't find some of the exercises easy until you have struggled with the easy ones.

I have printed the book in 3 parts since the pdf's were getting big. Note that it is designed to be printed in duplex open at the left (or right) and collated and stapled on the right to read from right to left as all Hebrew books are read.

Pages 1-12 (for a printer - actually these are pages 13-24) are here
Pages 13-25 (for a printer - actually these are pages 1-12 and the title page and its back) are here
Page 26 which could go as back to page 25 contains the 34 exercises here.

How many can you do? (There are 4 songs to sing - the music for the alef-bet song is an experiment in printing right to left.)

New Year approaching

Sunday School will start again in September. Some of the lessons last year were very hard and even my learning from them was limited. This year I am thinking that a book for each child might work as a year long exercise - 24 pages. There are a few pages without examples since I did not succeed in covering the entire alphabet last year. Any of you have ideas out there? How would you use a booklet like this? I am thinking colouring book + workbook. My initial draft is available here in pdf form.

Looking to year 2

Today we reviewed the alef-bet and sang through the alef-bet song. (You can hear the song here. I opened discussions as to how to better finish the lyrics.) There was a particularly attentive group today. Even the energetic spirit pointed out that Hebrew has two s's two t's and a ts. And the studious spirit had us repeat the song many times. I suggested that next year we might do a page for each letter as a letter of fire and end the year with an alef-bet book for each person. (Note the comment of the Velveteen Rabbi on this post re letters of fire.)

And I assigned homework for the summer. A kind of find Waldo exercise - see this diagram. For each letter in red on the second page, find it in the corresponding paragraph. For some of the children this will be more difficult than for others. I had a mistake in the diagram which I only discovered after printing it. So I left it there for the eldest to find. I don't know how it happened - somehow I had copied storm wind סער from Psalm 107:25 instead of sustain סעד Psalm 119:117. In the diagram I have replaced the Samech word with Support סמך as considered here. Perhaps I had two examples and kept differing pieces of them. It looks though as if I had traded a resh for a dalet - easy to do when reading or when writing but hardly when using copy and paste on a computer.

If we have a class during the summer, I will explore these shapes - maybe.

Have a fun summer - all.

Catching up

There was a full room on Sunday - 11 children and 4 adults. We sang and looked at the Shema in the book דברים (debarim). the second word of the book we call Deuteronomy (Greek roughly for second law). We read the Shema also - שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד just to the first word of chapter 6 verse 5 - and thou shalt love... ואהבת (ve'ahavta)

I wasn't sure how much time I had - and I could have gone further. But it was good to complete the sentence in English also...

After a year, I feel the need to emphasize the aural more - more talking - more singing - more communicative behaviour in the ancient tongue. I think I will try and link in further to the Cohelet project on this subject. (A very clever name - sounds like Qohelet the preacher = our Ecclesiastes!)