Parshat Noach - Rainbows
"Achrei Hachagim." Here we go, it is finally after the holidays. My plan is to now begin having the weekly art project correspond to the weekly Torah portion - "Parsha v'Yetsira." Yes, this is taking me back many years to the "Parsha Projects" that I did with my daughters when they were small. It actually takes me even further back to my days as a Midrasha teacher when I taught the weekly"mishmar" and always brought food that corresponded to the Parsha (and students had to guess the connection). And, of course, it connects to the G-dcast teacher's guide that I wrote back in San Francisco that forced me to come up with summaries, activities, and questions for every Torah portion.
Parshat Noach is obviously an easy and colorful Parsha to start off with. I knew I wanted to do rainbows and I knew I wanted to use PAINT. I wanted the project to be bright, fun, bold. As I researched, I realized how many exciting things there are to teach about rainbows. There is the religious aspects of the Noach story and the special bracha, the scientific aspects of refracted and reflected light, and the artistic aspects of the color wheel and primary, secondary, and complimentary colors. I wanted to do it all! I realized that this was really my ideal kind of lesson - one that combines Torah, art, and general knowledge. Maybe I could call it "STEAM" education, just replacing technology with Torah...something like that.
So, I did a little bit of everything. We talked about the rainbow in the Parsha, I did the little CD-rainbow trick and tried to explain (to the best of my limited understanding and in Hebrew!) the scientific causes of a rainbow. We then briefly discussed the color wheel and the order of the colors.
Choosing the final art project was painful - there are so many wonderful options (a google images-pinterest rabbit hole!). I considered trying to teach about an artist who used all the colors of the rainbow like Kandinsky or other great projects that I tried out over Sukkot with my own kids:
In the end, I chose a very simple project since this was our first time using paint which was enough of a challenge. Even though it was so simplistic, I think that the results are lovely and look pretty great displayed all together:
When I gave the kids their projects to take home, I taped the following piece of paper to the back so that they could discuss with their parents over shabbat. I LOVE the poem!
