Waldorf Grade 3: Old Testament and the Hebrews Unit

 After spending the first week of school reviewing math and grammar from last year, we jumped right in with our Old Testament unit.  We started with some geography lessons about the biblical lands as well as history of the Jewish people.

  With this background we moved on to the days of creation from Genesis.  Here are some of the main lesson book pages Will made to represent the first week.

 We used this youtube video to finger knit a snake for the Expulsion from the Garden story.

 Then we moved on to the fun stuff:  the fall Jewish holidays.  First we made a perpetual calendar wheel and studied the months and days of the Jewish calendar.

 Then we celebrated Rosh Hashanah by baking a Challah with apples and honey.  The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, and one we use every year. Will did most of the work this year and proudly brought one of the challah loaves to share at Temple services.

We also made main lesson pages for Yom Kippur and Sukkot:

 We finished up our unit with the stories of  Cain and Abel and the children of Lamech, descendent of Cain.  Lamech's children are Jabel, Jubal, Tubal-Cain and Naamah.  I had never heard of any of them before but it was very interesting to learn about the father of animal husbandry, the father of musical instruments, the father of metalwork and the mother of the weaving arts, respectively.

Our next unit is a math study, but will incorporate Noah and his ark into the lessons as we learn about measurements.  

Some resources for this unit study include:  

  Jewish Holidays All Year Round 

  Children's Illustrated Jewish Bible