Tamar was back at it again.
She had loved learning maths through the Tabernacle.
“Let’s see what else we can learn,” she said with a smile.
“Maths isn’t just numbers,” Uncle said. “It’s knowing what belongs where.” He showed her a list of the materials used to build the tent:
🪙 Gold, silver, bronze
🧶 Purple, blue, scarlet wool
🌳 Wood, linen, animal skins
“Let’s sort them,” said Uncle. “Which are metals, which are fabrics, and which come from animals?”
Tamar made three little piles:
⚙️ Metals: gold, silver, bronze
🧵 Fabrics: wool and linen
🐑 From animals: skins—and maybe even the wool.
“That’s classifying!” said Uncle.
“Like putting things in the right drawer.”
Uncle tapped the sorted piles with a smile.
“Now that we know what the Tabernacle was made of,” he said, “let’s try drawing it!”
He handed Tamar a piece of paper with little squares on it.
“It’s called square-grid paper,” he said. “The squares help you draw things the right size. Let’s draw the Tabernacle. If 1 cubit equals 1 square, you can draw it the same shape—just smaller!”
Tamar carefully drew:
📏 The Most Holy Place—10 × 10 squares
📏 The Holy Place—20 × 10 squares
📏 The Courtyard—100 × 50 squares
She looked at her drawing and grinned.
“It’s a mini-Tabernacle!”
Uncle smiled.
“That’s called a scaled drawing. You made something big into something small—but kept the shape.”
“Want to see something amazing in your drawing?” Uncle asked. “Divide that rectangle in half, and you get 2 squares.”
He drew an X in each.
“Now find the centres—where the lines cross.”
Tamar leaned in. “One’s right inside the Tabernacle!”
“That’s the Most Holy Place—where Jehovah’s presence is.”
“And the other?” Tamar pointed.
“The altar! That’s where the sacrifice is—like Jesus!”
“Exactly—the two most important persons in worship.”
Tamar smiled. “Even this tiny drawing tells the whole story.”
Uncle nodded. “That’s the power of good design.”
Tamar leaned over her drawing of the courtyard.
“It looks so… tidy,” she said.
“Like it could fold up and still match.”
She folded the rectangle side to side along the dotted line.
Both halves lined up.
“That’s called symmetry,” said Uncle. “If both sides match when you fold it, it’s symmetrical.”
Tamar held the paper up and smiled. “It’s like a mirror. Whatever’s on one side shows up on the other.”
She opened the paper like wings.
“Or a butterfly! Left and right, same shape.”
“Exactly,” said Uncle.
Tamar grinned.
“Symmetry is when shapes say, ‘Let’s meet halfway.’”
Uncle pointed to Tamar’s number list.
“Remember multiplying by 10?”
Tamar nodded. “Add a zero—3 becomes 30, 50 becomes 500.”
“Exactly. And dividing is the opposite: take a zero away.”
“Divide 500 by 10?”
“Take off one zero—it’s 50!”
“Divide 5,000 by 100?
“Two zeros gone. That’s 50!”
Uncle smiled. “Now let’s use that to learn something new.”
Tamar looked at her grid drawing.
“The Tabernacle is 30 squares long,” she said.
“And the smaller room is 10.”
Uncle nodded.
“So that’s 10 out of 30. We write it like this: 10⁄30.”
He pointed to the numbers.
“The first number shows the part you’re talking about, the other one shows the whole thing. The slash means: ‘out of.’”
Tamar tried it. “Ten out of thirty—I can divide both by ten!”
👉 10⁄30 → 1⁄3
“One third!” she said. “That little square is one third of the whole Tabernacle.”
Then she pointed to the courtyard.
“This whole space is 5,000 squares—and the Tabernacle is only 300.”
“Let’s write: 300⁄5000,” said Uncle. “Try dividing by 100.”
Tamar nodded.
👉 300⁄5000 → 3⁄50
“So the Tabernacle is three out of fifty parts of the courtyard!”
“Time for pizza!” Uncle exclaimed.
“Lucky we’ve got fractions—otherwise, it’s all or nothing!”
Exodus 25-27 (scaled drawing implied in 25:9); 1 Corinthians 14:33; Hebrews 9:11-14