Morah Gawel Class Update

Hello!  We had an INCREDIBLE week this week.  I am so proud of the kids for finishing this unit off with such devotion. They really focused and saw it through.  First, we finished out Inside Out viewing.  There were some groans from the peanut gallery that we were not going to watch the entire movie, but you just can’t win em all….torture! Only 20 minutes of a movie.  Argh! I am so mean.

Anyway, the kids re-read the text of Sodom and Gomorrah. We focused on the section where God and Abraham “wrestle” (metaphorically) with the destruction of the city.  God shares with Abraham that he will destroy this city and Abraham begins negotiating with God to spare the city if he can find X number of good citizens.  Each time Abraham counters with a number, God basically says “sure.”  Because God knows that Abraham will NEVER find this number of good people.  When Abraham gets to 10, God ends the discussion and the text says “And the Lord departed when He finished speaking to Abraham and Abraham returned to his place.”  I LOVE this part of the text. We discussed how God is kind of humoring Abraham, similar to the way parents do.  I tell my kids “no problem, we absolutely will go to Disney World when you make $5,000.” And they furiously tried to do enough chores to make it to 5k. Never happened. Or “no problem, I will absolutely let you move to LA if you get cast in a movie.”  Your kids all laughed: apparently you all do this too!  The best part of the text though is the line above, where 1) God has the last word and then leaves the room, so to say and 2) Abraham “returns to his place.”  We all know who is in charge.

To hit home this text, we had some class THUMB WARS! And discussed the rules of wrestling. When kids wrestle at home with siblings or at school in gym class or as a spot, there are rules.  1) Opponents have to be equal in some way (weight/size/age) 2) no”REAL” bodily harm can happen 3) There is a moderator or ref who says “Stop!” when things get out of control. Apparently some kids at home have to be on a bed, or some can “only do it when mom and dad are gone.”  (ha!) Anyway, we discussed how when wrestling with God, how do we know what the rules were?  Abraham could push God in a way, but only so far.  .. And God was clearly a “stronger” opponent than Abraham, so he must have “gone easy on him.”

Tuesday, we took this info and put it into scripts from the movie Inside Out. The kids had to create a dialogue for the “control panel” in God and in Abraham’s head… They were AMAZING.. a few examples:

God

Disgust: I don’t want to do this, but this is what happens..

Anger: How dare he try to find fifty people?

Joy :He’ll find 10 people for sure! My boy! Abraham is awesome.

Disgust: Ok. Whatever. I’ll never find 10, so be it, let me be !

Anger: Wicked people everywhere! Always wicked!

 

Abraham:

Fear: I don’t want the world to end. Yikes!

Sadness: no. the world is going to end! No!!! Ahh!

Joy: I’ll see if I can go to 10 and see if he says 10 people is ok.  Abe can do it!

Joy: thanks God for saying yes!

Sadness: why did you do that God?  Now I am going to have to work hard!

The kids also figured out which dominant emotion controlled each control panel.  God’s was Fear and a few said Disgust and Anger.  For Abraham it was Fear and Joy.  The kids each had really interesting answers as to why they thought this way.  It was a great unit and a great discussion. Looking forward to working on Exodus when everyone gets back.

Have a FANTASTIC break.

Morah Leah