Psalm 119 Copywork & Kid's Torah Scroll Tutorial (free sample)

I love the idea of making a kid's Torah scroll.  Making a Torah scroll is a great way to learn about the history of ancient writings,  encourage copy work, and give kids their own place to keep their work.  This idea was first introduced to me through My Father's World First Grade Homeschool Curriculum years ago.   The very first Torah scrolls we ever made were made with rolling pins.  This time we decided to use bamboo and a few other embellishments.    In MFW's curriculum it is a suggested activity to teach the history of the ancient Bible writings and as practice for writing the English alphabet. 

 I thought I would take it a step further to meet my kiddos needs.  All of my kiddos need extra practice wiring Hebrew letters, especially cursive Hebrew.  They also needed some Bible memory verse copy work - so I thought I would combine the two.  Thus, our Kid's Torah Scrolls were created.  I decided to use Psalm 119 since it is an acrostic of the Hebrew Alphabet.   First the kids did a review of the letter Aleph and practiced writing the letter in cursive and block with rainbow colors.

 

They then wrote out their Bible verse.  I used the first verse for each letter in Psalm 119 as their Bible copywork.  The younger kids practice writing in print, while my ten year old practiced her cursive handwriting.  The older three wrote out the verse in handwriting on their own and then practiced writing it in Hebrew also.  We examined each word that began with the letter aleph and pondered what the significance of each word could be.  

 

We concluded that just as the ancient letter aleph is a symbol of strength, so each verse talks about strength.  For example the word blessed in this verse is "ashray" אשׁרי .  Blessed, happy, or strengthened are those that are undefiled and who walk in the "Torah" בתורת of  "YHVH" יהוה .  As our Hebrew grows so does our Hebrewlish (Hebrew/English) and we dig a little deeper into the ancient words of the Bible.  If you are interested in trying out the copywork for the letter Aleph, just click any of the pictures to be taken to a free download.

Making the Kid's Torah Scroll was really pretty easy.  Here are the supplies that you will need:

-felt

-Velcro

-foam or wood balls to fit on the end of 2 dowels or bamboo sticks

-paper for your scroll

-string to tie your Torah

-felt and googlie eyes for the outside decorations

-hot glue

-staples

We stapled their papers to two bamboo sticks.  Painted our foam balls and hot glued them to the ends of the bamboo sticks.  We then rolled up our scroll and tied it with a string.  After hot gluing the Velcro onto the felt we decided on our outside decorations for our Torah scrolls.  We decided on a tree of life (etz caim chai - עץ־חיים היא) and a menorah (המנרות).  We will be adding our new letters every day by stapling them to the back of each page until we are done with the whole aleph bet.

We will be working on the whole Hebrew "Aleph - Bet" during our Hebrew and Bible classes this year from Psalms 119.  If you think this is something that your family or classroom could use just click on the covers below where you will find the full PDF in my store.

 

Have you ever made a Torah Scroll with your kids?  How did it turn out?  I would love to hear about it:)

Shalom,