Parshat Toldot: Twins

Yay! Doing the same project for the second year is BLISSFUL! Preparation is quick and painless :). And, I wrote in last year's blog that this project was a "keeper" and it was in fact just as fun this year. The only real change I made was doing the project on a smaller paper size which made it easier for the students to color the entire background if they chose. Talking about twins with first and second graders is super entertaining. They were definitely a little fuzzy on how exactly "twins" work - they were not all convinced that twins are actually in the mother's belly at the same time and many thought that twins could be born weeks apart (I told them that was super rare). I think part of the confusion is that in Hebrew, people use the word "teomim" casually to mean that two things or people look alike. Like last year, the kids love the "trick" of tracing their face using the window.

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While the results of this project may not be as artistically "impressive" as some others, I think that they are super cute:

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Naming their twins is a big part of the fun. If they were older, I would add a longer writing piece for them to describe how their twins are different both in physically appearance and in personality.

This year, I have the opportunity to teach Parsha in another setting with a small group of students who study at the Arab-Jewish school in Be'er Sheva. My focus with them is less on art and more on the details of the Torah stories so while I do a craft with them in each lesson, it is more directly connected to the parsha. So, with them, I wanted to do a craft that enforced our learning about Esav and Yaakov. Years ago, I prepared Yaakov and Esav puppets for Challah Crumbs:

Based on this idea (and some good old Christian Bible projects), I did a simpler version of this with my group. They loved using so many different materials (all of which I already had at home - stickers, felt, glue, scissors, toothpicks, velcro, tape).

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And, of course the snack for this week's lesson was a hearty delicious lentil stew:

SHABBAT SHALOM!