Dressing the Kohanim – parsha activity/craft

Along the same lines as our “Parts of the Mishkan” cut and paste from last week, we did a “dress up” for the kohanim.  I figured this would be right up Naomi’s alley – kind of like Barbie dolls, only for… well, priests.

If you want to do this with your kids, you can find the printable “paper doll” bodies here, and printable bigdei kehuna (that’s holy-talk for “kohen clothes”) from chinuch.org here and here. 

(The bodies and clothes are not an exact match, but tough noogies.  There are lots of other bodies out there if you want to keep searching for an exact fit; I didn’t.)

First, she coloured in the bodies (here, they’re trying on their hats!), then their clothes.  She made the kohen gadol a “gingy” (red hair) and the kohen hedyot blond.  The specific instructions I gave were:

• all the kohanim had the same michnasayim (pants) and kesones (tunic) (she ignored that and made them different colours – fine with me!)
• the efod (apron) was “very colourful” (she ignored that and made it black),
• the tzitz (headplate) was gold (she made it orange; close enough)
• the choshen had different-coloured jewels  (she liked that!), and
• the me’il was all blue. 

 

While she worked carefully on hers, I helped Gavriel Zev, who didn’t feel like colouring his very much (typical; he usually has no patience for colouring).  I cut out the pieces, and he enjoyed the gluing steps.  We made a “composite kohen” – regular clothes but the mitznefes, the special kohen gadol hat.  I helped him write a “G” at the bottom for his name – he was very proud of that.

 

Meanwhile, Naomi’s careful colouring was done.  We glued down the bodies, then michnasayim (trousers), kesonos (tunics), hats, tzitz, and finally, the me’il, efod and tzitz on the kohen gadol.  I stuck a scrap of paper over the regular kohen’s midsection for an avneit (sash).

  

I think these came out great (see above!) – and I also know that the lesson will probably stick better than if we just sat and talked about what all the clothes looked like.

I still want to try these yummy-looking “choshen” snack treats from the now-on-aliyah/leave Parsha Projects blog.  Check out the choshen apron, too!

I am totally into the  kohen gadol – I love reading these parshiyos every year, love all the details.  Some people don’t see the relevance of these parshiyos, but I figure once we sealed the deal at Har Sinai, everybody would have been milling about saying, “what now?”  These mishkan parshiyos answer that question very nicely.

They usually come out right before Purim, so I have dressed up as the kohen gadol a few times now…

Great Parsha Fun!