Parsha Pinchas

One of the wonderful blogs I read (I wish I could remember which one) recommended Challah Crumbs which has activities and crafts to go with each parsha. Since getting Froggy to do any craft is a serious but necessary challenge and I wanted something to spice up our weekly parsha study which has not yet made the transition out of the preschool style this was the perfect answer.

This week, we studied Parsha Pinchas which offers one of the far too few opportunities to celebrate the women of the our history. In Pinchas, we meet the five daughters of Tzelafchad: Machlah, No'ah, Chaglah, Milkah and Tirtzah whose names I would not even know without Challah Crumbs as neither of our study books mention them. When Tzelafchad dies, these daughters petition Moses to grant them their father’s inheritance since he had no sons. Their request is ultimately rewarded and they become models of initiative and wisdom.

To honor them and remind Froggy that there are lots of women in our history as well as the men she constantly hears about, we made a Sister Chain. The project was a tremendous hit. It took almost an hour for Froggy to decorate the dolls yet she stuck with it and stayed interested the whole time. Those who follow our art troubles will really how amazing that truly is.

I prepared the dolls in advance. Five is a hard number for paper dolls and I had to cut though out from two sheets and add the last sister with tape.
Froggy cut out dresses for them and put hair on them. She really thought about what clothes to give to which sister. It was so cute. I gave them their faces under her direction.

And every sister was dressed in her own clothes and ready to sing and dance.
She was so proud of her work that she had to take it with her on her adventures all day. She will remember Machlah, No'ah, Chaglah, Milkah and Tirtzah now and we can honor their initiative.