Hobbies And Interests
In The Beginning...
The Torah starts out with the same creation story as found in the Bible, so it's easy to include the story of creation among the games played with children. Try scrambling the days of creation and have the children list them in proper order. This can be a group effort with children calling out answers or a team-based activity, with the team who gets the answers right first winning the game. This works best for younger children.
Passover
The story of passover is about God's last resort to get the pharaoh to let his people leave Egypt. The story is told to show God's love for his chosen people. After telling the story of the Passover and the meal held in remembrance, have the kids do a pre-printed word search containing words like pharaoh, Moses, blood, plagues, seder and slaves. For a more physical activity, hide words or pictures pertaining to the story around the room and have the kids find them.
Noah's Ark
The story of Noah and the Ark is in both the Torah and the book of Genesis in the Bible. After teaching the children about the ark and flood, you can have them play Noah's Ark Tag. The kids will pair up with two children remaining. One will be the "chaser" and the other will be the seeker. The seeker will run up to a pair and link arms with one child. The child on the other side now has to unlink arms and run away from the chaser. If an unlinked child gets tagged, he trades roles with the chaser.
Jonah and the Big Fish
Jonah was told by God to go to Ninevah, but instead he tried to flee to Tarshish. In order to show how God found Jonah even though he tried to hide, play hide and seek with the kids. Either the teacher can be the seeker or one child can be chosen at random to play "God" and find all the fleeing "Jonahs." If you don't feel comfortable with anyone pretending to be God, have the seeker be the big fish God sent to swallow up Jonah.