NOAH

Each year, I do something with the story of Noah's Ark when it comes up in the Torah--its the second parsha.

I've done edible Noah's Ark (I know, unbelievable, right?) which can be done several different ways--a tortilla or pita makes a good ark (cut in half), on which you can spread cream cheese or peanut butter or whatever and then stick on animal crackers. Pretty simple. Another ark can be created with graham crackers or wafer cookies to form a kind of square-ish shaped thing into which you can put animal crackers.

This year, having done so many edible crafts, I decided to do my "alternate" activity which is absolutely non-food related! :)

Class Noah's Ark 
large piece of butcher paper
blue and white tempera paint
paint brushes (one per child)
large piece of poster board cut into an ark shape (or simple boat shape)
magazines
scissors
LOTS of glue
bark from trees that "shed" (don't peel bark from trees at all--it is not good for the tree, but once the bark has been shed, you can pick it up off the ground, let it dry out (if it happens to be wet) and let the critters crawl out of it (a surprising amount of bugs will come along with you when you pick up bark from the grass or ground.

This project can be set up in "stations" if you have a large class or, if you have a smaller class, you can have the children wander from one activity to the other. If there is time, you can have this project take a week or several days to complete.

1. Have children cut out pictures of animals from magazines. It doesn't matter if they're all different sizes and if the children cut out 100 pictures of dogs and cats... its more the practice of cutting and looking for "animals". Kids can also be very "creative" and cut out pictures of TOYS or pictures of ART (especially for baby rooms) that has an animal look. Encourage them to cut out a variety of animals and to choose pictures that you can tell its a certain animal without too much effort.

2. Dribble lots of blue an white paint on the butcher paper and have the children mix and spread the paint all over it, encouraging them to cover the whole sheet all the way to the edge.

3. Have children LIBERALLY apply white school glue (Elmer's) to the poster board and attach pieces of bark all over it. Because bark is bumpy and doesn't always lay flat, I usually "scribble" the glue all over the top of the bark when its complete to help hold it all on. You can also come in after all the glue is dry and hot glue down pieces that are not sticking.

4. Move the ark to the painted paper (the paint does not need to be dry).

5. Have children stick the animal pictures "into" the ark. If the paint is still wet, the pictures will likely stick to the paint and more glue will not be necessary. The adult can show the children how they can tuck the picture just under the "ark" to make it look like the animals are IN the ark. The children LOVE to make the animals "fly" and "swim" so don't worry too much about the realism of the project.

6. After everything has dried, check that everything is staying on. The ark may need to be glued down more effectively given the weight of the paper + bark + tons of glue. I have stapled this to the butcher paper and I've used hot glue to really attach everything without more waiting.

This project can also easily be modified to accommodate individual ark projects using construction paper for the background, a piece of heavy cardboard for the ark, and "smaller" pictures of animals or merely animal stickers.

An additional "add on" could be to have the children paint a rainbow or, for younger children, the teacher can cut out the a very thick arc of red, a slightly smaller orange, slightly smaller yellow, etc. all the way to the purple or indigo and have children arrange the pieces to make the rainbow. Attach the rainbow to the large class project.