What has 4 walls, a door and must be 7 tefachim by 7 tefachim?

This was the question that Gan Aleph was presented with this week! It did not take long for the children to realize we were talking about a Sukkah! Yet, the question remained...what is a tefach!? The children learned that a tefach is a unit of measurement that is used in Judaism. This led to our discussion on measurement. We talked about how when you measure something you are putting an amount to it. We brainstormed different ways to measure something (ruler, scale) and different measurement terms (cup, teaspoon, foot,

yaWe used a tape measure to conclude that 7 tefachim is aproximately equal to 2 feet. This

rd etc.). so what is a tefach? A tefach is equal to the size of one's fist.

means a sukkah must be at least 2 feet by 2 feet. We used a tape measure and colored tape to measure this out on our floor. The children then watched some of their peers place their fists down to see if it really took 7 fists to make one side of a minimum sukkah. It did! We came to the conclusion that these measurements are just enough to fit one person inside the sukkah. The children took turns using different items in the classroom (scissors, glue, legos etc.) to explore the size of the sukkah and see how many of their item it would take to fill up the len

gth and the wid

th of the sukkah. We truly had a blast exploring the size of a sukkah and learning about

measurement in the process!