Ki Tisa- One-to-One Correspondence

"Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: 'When you will take a census of the Children of Israel according to their counts, every man shall give Hashem an atonement for his soul when counting them, and there will be no plague among them when counting them. This is what they shall give- everyone who passes among the counted- half of the shekel, by the holy shekel, the shekel is twenty geirah, half of the shekel as a portion to Hashem. Everyone who passes among the counted, from the age of twenty years and up, shall give the portion of Hashem. The wealthy shall not increase and the destitute shall not decrease from half of the shekel- to give the portion of Hashem, to atone for your souls. You shall take the silver of the atonements from the Children of Israel and give it for the work of the Tent of Meeting; and it shall be a remembrance before Hashem for the Children of Israel, to atone for your souls.'" ~Shemot 30:11-16

One-to-One Correspondence Activity:
[K-2 concept]
In this week's parsha, we learn of Hashem telling Moshe that at such time as he chooses to take a census- a counting of the number of people, either total Children of Israel or a portion of the population- he should not just count the people. Rather, he should have each person being counted give a half-shekel as a donation to the Holy Tabernacle. It explicitly states that a rich person should not give more, and a poor person should not give less; any person being counted must give exactly a half-shekel. 

Socially, an important message about the value of human life can be embedded into this lesson- each person is equally as important; a rich person's life isn't worth more, and a poor person's life isn't worth less.

Mathematically, if each half-shekel is representative of a person in the given community, it is important for each person to give exactly a half-shekel (no more, no less). Children can discuss what would happen if someone put in an extra half-shekel, or if other people gave less than a half-shekel. 

An activity of playing out taking a census in the classroom with a given token can help students understand the one-to-one correspondence of each person giving in one specific coin to represent their presence as part of the community. Together, they can look at the coins collected to see that the number of coins matches exactly to the number of people in the class. 

A follow-up activity would be to have some students with extra coins and some students with fewer coins (or no coins). Children could be allowed to give as many coins as they want. Then go back, as a class, to look at how many coins were collected and see if they can figure out how many people are in the class based on the coins collected. How does the number of coins compare to the actual number of students in the class? Students will be able to see the confusion caused by the discrepancy- the missing aspect of the one-to-one correspondence.

Base-10 Connection:
[3-5 concept]
Students can also talk about the idea that, in Judaism, we don't count out individual people. If we need to know how many people are in a group, we use another method of tallying the number of people in the group. Rather than counting people, for example, we could count people by their shirts (17 shirts in a room means 17 people who are wearing those shirts). If you do need to "point and count" people in a group, there is a custom to use the passage:

"הושיע את עמך וברך את נחלתך ורעם ונשאם עד עולם" 

"Save Your people, and bless Your inheritance; And tend them, and carry them forever" 

~Tehillim 28:9 

Mathematically, using this Hebrew phrase from Tehillim works out very nicely, since there are 10 words in the phrase. Each word represents one person, so every full phrase represents 10 people. Students can discuss different example situations of how many full passages and a number of extra words represents how many people in a group. For example, if I'm counting people in a crowd, and I go through the full passage 3 times and then begin the passage again, ending on the word "וברך", that would mean that there are 34 people in the crowd.