Sunday School lesson 2

Feedback from lesson 1 from the adults was very positive. I had pre-arranged the blocks to read from Genesis as in this image and I had printed several copies of the image of ci-tov as noted in the prior post here. As I talked a bit about different writing systems, and read the verse in Genesis 1 to them, I got them to cut out a section of the ci-tov image so that they each had one for themselves.

What some children enjoyed the most was wrapping the paper around their fingers or rolling it up into a cylinder - next time maybe I will do a mobius strip with them in class.

What's my next word to teach going to be? I thought maybe אֱלֹהִים (Elohim) but I am stuck for a few things - what to do with the 'idea' of God in letters - the plural form, the difference between a name and an unnamable. I wonder about making a bit of Psalm 82 in the blocks then showing that Elohim occurs 36 times in Genesis 1-2:4 alone. I don't think the children will 'get' a graph of the usage of Elohim verses the tetragrammaton.

And I thought also that if any one of them is keen to learn more outside of 5 minutes a week, they need some names for the letters - so I will have a one page handout on the letters and let the letter names teach themselves. See the image to the left for the idea. (And feel free to use it for teaching or learning if you like.)

To make that image work, I will get the children to find the letters from week 1 in it, and then get them to find the letters from the rest of that verse and maybe another verse like Psalm 82 verse 5.

I will avoid diacritical marks for a while (except the mater lectiones and the necessary dagesh and marks to distinguish shin and sin). Then I don't teach again till mid June. The first lesson was fun for me. I wonder what will come of these lessons.