Erev Shabbos Shmini recap

Today was a fun day.

Tefilla – we talked about how it is pretty cool that Hashem cares about each of us individually after all – we wouldn’t care about each fly in our room and we should be equally as important. We also talked about how wonderous it is that we get rewarded for each deed we do.

We learned 4 Mishnayos from Perek 1 of Pirkei Avos and did paper folding projects to illustrate them. They are included here. I’ll try to post pictures of them soon. I am sending the kids home with a translated perek to learn over Shabbos

I also love Parshas Shmini. We used the parsha sheets from Rabbi Mendel Balsam from Yeshiva of Spring Valley and the word finds from Rabbi Benyomi Hoffman. He also has soduku puzzles for each parsha
I printed coloring sheets by printing 4 pages on 1 sheet. It was a helpful reference when describing the animals and they understood that bats were halachically birds, not mammals from the picture.

Another nice alternative from chinuch.org are sheets from Rochel Possick.

To prepare: Aside from reading the pesukim (can’t beat that) with Rashi, I used the Little Medrash Says on Vayikra to get a good sense of what is in the parsha. It is pretty comprehensive and includes topics from the pshat that were ignored by most other children’s parsha material – such as בקרבי אקדש, or וידם אהרן.

Best question of the day: If the Mishna in Avos says that the world stands on Torah, Avodah & Gemilas Chasadim, and the gemara says that the Avodah only began on 1 Nissan 2449, how is it possible the world kept on existing.  Answer  (R. Yehoshua ben Levi): The 26 repetitions [of “Ki l’Olam Chasdo”] in Hodu correspond to the 26 generations from creation until Matan Torah – during that time Hashem’s Chesed fed the world