Children's Activity for Parsha Bereshit

Shalom,

Here is a Parsha Bereshit activity I came up with you can do with your children. I will be using it this Shabbat with my class.

What you will need:

Note cards or card stock paper (at least eight cards per child)
Pen or pencil
Crayons or colored pencils
Scissors
A cup or other circle whose diameter is approximately 3 inches

Use the cup's rim to make circles on the cards, then cut out the circles. The circles need to be pretty close to the same size and each child needs seven circles and a couple extra for mess ups. You can chose to cut out the circles or let them, if they are old enough, to cut out a circle.

Label on one side of each circle, write Day 1 through Day 7. For example, put "Day 1" on the first card, "Day 2" on the second card, "Day 3" on the third, and so on.

While reading each verse of Genesis (Bereshith) 1, stop after each day of creation and let the child draw a picture on blank side(or opposite side) of something that reminds him of what was created on that day.

On Day 1 - have the child draw a line across the circle and color half of the card black - "Separated the light from the darkness"
On Day 2 - have the child draw two parallel lines in the middle of the card about a centimeter apart and color above and below the the parallel lines blue - "separated the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse"
On Day 3 - have the child draw what looks like a globe with blue for the oceans and green for the dry land - "waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear." and draw grass, plants, or fruit somewhere on the green part of the globe - "earth brought forth grass, the plant..."
On Day 4 - have the child draw the sun, moon, and stars - "made two great lights ...and the stars"
On Day 5 - have the child draw fish and birds - "created great sea creatures .... and every winged bird"
On Day 6 - have the child draw livestock or any kind of walking animal and a man (or some likeness of a person, could be a stick person if need be)
On Day 7 - have the child draw nothing or Shabbat Candles or anything that represents Shabbat to your family

Mix the circles up and let the child practice putting the circles in order of creation, only looking at the picture side, and then flipping the circles over to see if they got the order correct. Keep doing this until they get all seven circles in order without help.

Teaching -
Now take "Day 7" circle, picture side up, and place it in front of the child. Start with circles "Day 1" through "Day 6" (picture side up) and place them in order around "Day 7", Shabbat, touching the perimeter of "Day 7" circle. See how neatly the six days encircle the Shabbat. We need the six days to prepare us for the Shabbat, just like YHVH made six days which ended with the Shabbat. Shabbat is the goal of the week and the center of the week. Without Shabbat what is the purpose of the six days? There would be no starting over and no rest to enjoy YHVH's presence.

You can keep the circles in a sandwich bag for review later. Also, if you are teaching Hebrew to you child, you may want to use "Yom Rishon, Yom Sh'ni, Yom Sheshli, etc instead of Day 1, Day 2, and so on.

Shalom, Tami