Curious George Pre-K Friends: Simchat Torah!

To prepare for Simchat Torah, Rabbi Allenberg invited us to join him in the sanctuary so he could teach us about the Torah. As he holds one of the Torahs, he explains to the children that we don't use our fingers to touch the writing in the Torah. We use a special pointer called a Yad.

After explaining about the Yad, Rabbi Allenberg removed the crowns and the breastplate from the Torah. He explained that the crowns have bells and the breastplate is like a beautiful necklace.

The teachers unrolled the Torah as the children watched . They were amazed to see all the words in the Torah. Rabbi Allenberg explained that the Hebrew words in the Torah were written with a special pen, so it takes a long time to make a Torah.

Back in the room, we began to make our own Torah covers. We gave the children the choice of paints and different brushes to paint their covers. The children enjoyed moving their brushes up and down with quick repetitive movements. They also swirled the paint with long and short strokes. As you can see in the pictures, each child had their own technique to make their beautiful covers!

As well as using the different strokes, several children decided that their designs should reflect symbols from our previous holidays. Briana is making a sukkah. She used a small sponge brush to create the three walls of the sukkah,

Saul used the same brush to make Rosh Hashana apples.

Charlotte painted a necklace on her cover to resemble the breastplate that Rabbi Allenberg had shown us in the sanctuary. Every child's cover became a unique piece of art.

After painting our covers, we dot painted our crowns. Daniel told Patrick they could share space while they both worked. The children are really internalizing some of our "community building" words!

Zoey definitely had a plan before she started. She carefully placed each dot of paint so that her crown would be filled with beautiful colors!

After the paint dried, every child twisted bells on pipe cleaners to their crowns.

After adding his bells, Jake tried on his crown so that the other children could see if it resembled the crowns with bells that Rabbi Allenberg showed us in the sanctuary.

To make the final piece of their Torah costume, we showed the children a breastplate with the Tree of Life. We gave the children a choice. They could make The Tree of Life or the Hebrew letters from the Ten Commandments on their breastplates. Saul and Emma made the Tree of Life. You can see how they are studying the design of the tree as they make their own Tree of Life.

Amelia and Daniel are making the Hebrew letters. We were pleasantly surprised to see how carefully they tried to reproduce the letters. Whether they made The Tree of Life or the Hebrew letters, all our children's breastplates were well done!