Teacher Review
Exodus 24: 9-11 (translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan)
9Moses then went up, along with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders.
10They saw a vision of the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a sapphire brick, like the essence of a clear [blue] sky.
11[God] did not unleash His power against the leaders of the Israelites. They had a vision of the Divine, and they ate and drank.

Lesson – part I

9Moses then went up, along with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders.

Shavuot celebrates the revelation of Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Torah stories seem to reflect many different goings ups and downs the mountain. Sometimes just Moses, sometimes this particular group, the “70 elders of Israel.” They are considered to be representative of the entire community, the 70 different faces or voices of our people.

Ask: Which one of these voices are you?
With younger children, try using this sentence “I use my voice to..” and then echo back to them, “You are the voice of…”

10They saw a vision of the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a sapphire brick, like the essence of a clear [blue] sky.

The beauty of 70 different faces is (at least) 70 different visions!
Ask: What was your vision? And what could that sapphire brick possibly have looked like? Some call it, “the footstool of God.”

11They had a vision of the Divine, and they ate and drank.

Why not have a delicious snack in honor of the moment?!

Lesson – part II  

“Rabbi Yose said: ‘How are we to understand the words, ‘and they saw the God of Israel”? Who can see the Holy One? Is it not written: “No man can see Me and live”? It means that a rainbow appeared above them in radiant colors resplendent with the beauty of God’s presence.”

Make a portrait of the Divine. Explore color, using everything and anything you got. These students used glitter and tissue paper. Try cray pas, watercolors, flower petals, anything with color.

* This holiday is sponsored by the numbers 7 and 10*

Teacher Review
Exodus 19:14 -17 Moses climbs up the mountain, the people prepare, the mountain shakes with excitement
Exodus 20: 2-18  Ten Commandments

For the art project
Supplies:  sturdy paper, glue, glue bowls and brushes, fine sand, tissue paper cut into squares

Lesson
Begin with a quick reminder of our path out of Egypt, across the Sea of Reeds. And here we are now in the desert wilderness surrounded by…  sand! Where are we going? How will we get there? What does it feel like to have the sand under our feet and the sun over our head?

Paint the bottom of the paper with a light brush of glue, start sprinkling sand onto it to be the desert ground.

Open a Jewish calendar and count together (in Hebrew!) from the days of Passover to the holiday of Shavuot, 1(echad)  2(shtayim)  3(shalosh) 4(arba)  5(chamesh)  6(shesh)  7(sheva)  and again 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 etc. 7 times over until you reach Shavuot. 

That’s how long our great great great great…great grandparents walked on the sand in the desert.
Sprinkle some more sand. Until… we reached Mt. Sinai.  

Paint more glue into the shape of a mountain and sprinkled the sand in the shape of the mountain.

Moses climbs up the mountain.
Re-enact Moses’s climb up Mt. Sinai.   Re-enact the shaking and thunder and lightning excitement of the dramatic moment when we received the gift of Torah.

Discuss how it feels to receive presents and how this is the biggest gift of all.

Tell a story: Midrash tells us that at the very moment of receiving Torah, all of Mt. Sinai spontaneously bloomed into a rainbow of colorful blossoms! 

Using the dip and stick technique, scrunch up colorful pieces of tissue paper to make  “flowers”, dip them in a bowl of glue and paste onto the mountain to make bursts of color all over the page.

The Ten Commandments
What’s in the Torah?  What did Moses and the people receive that day? All kinds of stories that teach us how to be the best we can be and lay out the rules for a good life.  Discuss the rules your students have that make them feel safe and secure in the home, at school and with their friends.  Also, the rules that make us Jewish (i.e. Shabbat) I don’t think it’s critical to go through the actual ten commandments with this age group.  There are some that are fun to discuss and you should feel free to play around with this.  The story here is about creating rules for good living.  

Music Suggestions (depending on what direction you go, there are many other fun choices)
Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe
Hakafah (Peter and Ellen Allard)
Tree of Life
Rainbow Round Me

Follow UP
Make tissue paper flowers to decorate the classroom and home.

How to make this a personal practice?

Look back at your year… Gather memories, accomplishments, photos, meaningful moments. Capture these images all together and take the time to reflect on the seeds you have nourished all year.

Shavuot also celebrates the moment we received Torah on Mt. Sinai.  How to honor Torah with our children?

With my youngest students, I like to collect mitzvot all year long. At the start of every class we think back over the week and each child tells of a moment when she or he took action to make the world a better place, to help another, to take care of the self.  We write their mitzvot on a construction paper leaf.  By the end of the year, we have quite a collection!  Here are a few examples,

Paying attention by saying a “thank you” Bracha for the food we eat
Making the world “right” by contributing Tzedakah
Lighting Shabbat candles to take time in life to rest and spend time with each other
Sharing, helping, noticing, loving
See? These are things we do every day! 

In celebration of Shavuot we gather our Mitzvah leaves.  We look at a year’s worth of efforts and hard work.

We study the different kinds of Mitzvot we have done as listed in the Eilu D’varim prayer below.