Laws of Sefirat Ha-Omer

Back to business here in 4th grade. To help students better understand the period of the omer in which we now find ourselves, we used Jigsaw and PowerPoint to learn the following:

• what an omer is and why we call sefirah by its name
• laws related to the count itself
• customs that take hold during this time

The Talmud tells us that the period of the omer count is punctuated by tragic events, notably the death of 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's students. The cause? "They did not give honor to one another" (Yevamot 64b).

The antidote to this, of course, is to give honor to those around us. To help us do this, students made "omer cards" - one for each of the remaining days in the count (until day 49) with a daily message and lesson that we as a class will try to achieve. Not only will this help us maintain a daily count of sefirah ha-omer, but we will hopefully develop a better awareness of our interpersonal relationships as well.