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.

Introduction

As Hebrew school teachers we strive to make our curriculum come alive. One of the best ways to do that is through games. Here are a few Hebrew school games to play with your students. I recommend using them as review games to use at the end of each class. Hopefully these games will make your students excited to attend Hebrew school and help them pay attention in class.

Here are a few things to note:

• This blog gives instructions to how to play the games but leaves you the teacher with the responsibility to come up with appropriate questions and tasks for each game. This allows you to match any of these review games with any of your subjects.

• In the past I have allowed students to take notes throughout the class in a "Machbaret" notebook and I have allowed them to use whatever they have written down as part of the game.

• Small Prizes for the winning team helps encourage kids to participate in the games. However, most students are inspired by the feeling of competition.

• Warning: Some of the more risky sounding games may need fine tuning.

Please feel free to e-mail me your games and feedback on these games at Lasday@aol.com.