Parshat Chayei Sarah: CAMELS

This week, I made ALOT of camels.

Basically, the way I come up with my projects is that I scan the parsha and whatever idea seems to be particularly visual and can also be abstracted to a bigger theme, wins. This week, the story of Rebekkah providing water for "Eliezer's" camels won based on these criteria.

I was already excited about doing "camel art" when I went on a walking tour of the old city just last week and visited the art gallery of Dorit Sherf-Bussle who is somewhat obsessed with camels! She spoke to us passionately about the unique characteristics of camels and why she was attracted to them as an artistic subject. Her work and her talk really encouraged me to make camels this week's focus.

Although I loved Dorit's bold, colorful, big art, I couldn't think of how to transfer it successfully for the kids. Instead, I chose a project that I knew would look good and that the kids would enjoy. In some ways, I felt like this project was a "cop-out" because it did not really challenge them or teach them about a particular style or technique. It was more similar to a generic craft using stickers, beads, pipe cleaners, cutting, and gluing. I did try to introduce a few concepts such as silhouette and color contrast.

I did the project three times with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. I worked with the first graders first so their camels were the ones featured on the collaborative board. At the very last minute, I decided that it would be cool if I did something different in that they all contributed their individual camel to a shared landscape. I mean very last minute. I mean me painting a bristol board in the parking lot like a crazy woman...

I think that my temporary insanity paid off. The presentation looked impressive even though the individual camels may not have been. It also gave kids who finished something to do - attach the camels to the board and decorate the frame. The kids were pretty amazed by how their individual camels were so quickly transformed into this big scene.

The second time I did the project was with twenty-five 3rd graders who I have never worked with before. Oy vey. Let's just say that there were a number of "challenging" kids in this class and it is a miracle that I was able to do anything with them. I am going to skip the gory details here but trust me that it wasn't pretty. Since I couldn't get quiet for long enough to even explain what we were going to do, I finally allowed them to start working on the project without giving any explanation or instructions. This turned out to be a decent strategy. Once they were cutting and drawing and gluing, they were quiet enough for me to talk about the connection to the Parsha. Also, unplanned, we used their final products to decorate a window in their classroom that was desperately needing to be covered up!

Finally, I worked with a small group (15) of 2nd graders...blissful in comparison. Although, like the first graders, there was still a fair amount of fighting over the supplies (think "It's not fair!" "I didn't get any!" "He grabbed from me!" "I want more!"). But, because the group was so much smaller, I was able to work with each child and we had fun naming our camels ("Gal Hagamal") and learning more interesting facts about the animal (nostrils that close, hump stores fat, extra eyebrows and eyelashes, two humps or one, drink 40 gallons at a time...I also learned that the hump is called a "daveshet" and that a female camel is called a "naaka." :))

SHABBAT SHALOM!