The book blocks are coming

I have all the blocks 35 for the OT and 27 for the New - the thirty five are shaped according to the organization of the Hebrew Scriptures in three sections: Law, Prophets and Writings. The Law are the five books of Moses, the Prophets are divided into the former prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings), the later prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) and the 12 (so named in Aramaic). The Writings are divided in three also: the Book of Truth (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), the five Megillot (Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Kohelet, and Esther), and the three remaining (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles). That's 5 + 4 + 3 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 3 = 35 'books'. I have not included the Apocrypha but I do have a few blocks left - and could do it. The New Testament is the 4 Gospel accounts, Acts, the 13 Pauline letters, the general epistles, John's letters and Revelation and Hebrews. That should give 27 (4+1+13+4+3+2) and it does - yea! 62 books altogether - 4 taken as one each where the traditional OT divides them in two.

There are two pdf's.  NT and TNK They fit exactly on 3 x 5 inch plywood blocks - print without scaling on 8.5 x 11 paper. (The plywood edges sort of look like pages). One requires the following sizes.

BOOK	TESTAMENT	SIZE
14	n	1	.25"
5	n	2	.375"
6	n	3	.5"
2	n	4	.675"
10	o	1	.25"
6	o	2	.375"
5	o	3	.5"
6	o	4	.675"
7	o	5	.75"
1	o	6	.875"	(use glue)

The book labels themselves are in Hebrew and Greek. The labels are meant to be put on as for left to right reading (sorry). They are intended for Hebrew to English and Greek to English exercises as well as for piling on top of each other and learning to count and learning what the books of the Bible are (without too much  parochial reductionism).

It is possible to print them out on white paper that will take glue or on a mac-tac type of paper, then cut the images out and paste them onto the wood blocks (you'll have to make those). You can cut the Hebrew labels in two (or 3) and bind them right to left. You'll get the idea. (But if you are interested, get in touch with me. I found a few errors and difficulties as I actually did the matching so I am not sure if my sizes are quite right, and I have added a few puzzles to the labels since printing to PDF which has its own idiosyncrasies with large paper sizes.) You could also print them on cardboard stock and fold them to shape - but they won't be as resilient as wood.

Oh - I did do a short lesson last week - just a few minutes on counting again and we sang the shema - I will repeat this till they really know it. There are some fine musicians there.

Immersion in אֶחָד

Well, how did it go this morning? How much Hebrew can one immerse the children in? Not too much at least not for me. We did our five minute lesson on One and they all learned, practiced and sang the shema with me. words alone - tune to la la la and then put it all together. I know we got through this with some success - I have never heard this group sing so loud.

As usual when looking at my illustration of 'One', all heads gathered close so I had to ask for my space back to spread out the map of Genesis 1. It was 4 feet by 2 feet. The colors are many and I think they recognized some of the patterns in the refrains on the page, but I did not read anything in sequence.

There was no one there who remembered the first lesson from Spring 2008 so I repeated it quickly. Then I pointed out the uses of and God said - I found only 9 but I was sure there were 10. The computer counts 10 so there must be 10. Where is the tenth? (One of them is in verse 28 and the computer is counting only the word 'and he said'.) We read together the refrains and counted thus up to 7.  I think we will have a lesson on every number, so all this was by way of introduction.

Have you noticed this?

ויאמר אלהים נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו
And God said - let us make a human in our image after our likeness 

וירדו בדגת הים ובעוף השמים
to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven etc

ויברא אלהים את־האדם בצלמו
So God created the human in his image

בצלם אלהים ברא אתו
In the image of God he created it
זכר ונקבה ברא אתם
male and female he created them

God says - let's make the human in our image according to our likeness
But then God creates the human in his image

What's missing? In a poem where repetition is a pattern closely followed, this 'after our likeness' is not repeated.

Likeness without image is used in Genesis 5 - How are we to understand the missing words? The use of likeness with respect to the human is not taken up again till the visions of Ezekiel.

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.