Playing Pieces

First thing you need to do before you start playing the following Hebrew school games is to make Jewish game pieces. Every great game has great game pieces. For example, Monopoly from the thimble to the hat, Risk with the cannon and horse, and Battleship with the array of ships.

After using these pieces to play games each class for a semester, students will end up recognizing the game pieces before most of the material you have covered in class. Therefore, be strategic when picking game pieces. For example, when I was teaching the Tribes of Israel I used each tribe as a game piece. In the past my game pieces have consisted of characters from the Aleph Bet (print and script), prayers, holidays, Torah figures, and people from Jewish history. I crack up every time a student yells out that hey want to be Eliyahu Ben Yehuda (founder of modern day Hebrew)

How Do I Make These Pieces You Ask

Very Easy. Just print out pictures from the computer. Search images using Google image search. You can draw characters or cut them out of magazines. The key is attaching the magnetic tape to the back so you can use them on the black board.