Sunday, October 2, 2011

New year in Sunday School

It has been some time since I have done regular posting on this blog. But perhaps the time has come again. After 5 years of learning Hebrew, it is a joy to share a bit of it with the students.  I think this model could be followed elsewhere also.  Compared to the first year and the first word I taught to a class in age range from 4 to 13, today I taught the first word to a class of 7 in a very much more focused age group - 7 to 9 (or 10), and also I was able to teach something of the Spirit's work in Creation to the older class (11-14) learning the Acts of the Apostles.

The first word was again ki-tov, for it is good. The original lesson is in the archives here. I used a new handout, but the content is very similar. Some of the children remember earlier lessons and I can build on them. So I included another use of the phrase from Psalm 136:1.

Psalm 136 is roughly To-dah le'adonai ki-tov, ki le'olam chesedo and the Genesis verse vayareh elohim et-ha'or ki-tov.

After introducing this word and the sound of the Hebrew, we sang the alef-bet song. It was the first time for many of the children, but they caught on quickly.

In the older class, one student had just read Peter's defense in Acts 4:8. To begin at the beginning we read the first two verses of Genesis and the role of the Spirit / Breath of God in Creation brooding over turbulent waters, even as Peter and all of us have to deal with turbulence in our lives. There were some very attentive faces in the older class.  Some of them are completely new to Hebrew, so there was some mystification also.  But they too will learn quickly how much fun this is.

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