Raising children in love and faith
Hanukkah is here and we are so happy to celebrate the holiday by doing one of our favorite activities: reading fun holiday books! We read a ton of books in our house and are forever grateful to PJ Library for sending us new Jewish-themed books every month. I like to pull out the holiday books …
Hanukkah + sensory bin = a fabulously fun and educational activity for your little (and not so little) ones! This is the perfect activity for when you’re frying latkes, rolling your rugelach, or even just for fun in the week of and leading up to Hanukkah. It’s also super easy to make, can be used …
In the past I’ve been overwhelmed by the Hanukkah week, even though it remains one of my favorite holidays. But last year I got my act together and we shifted some of the chaos away from nightly presents to nightly family-focused activities. These were activities that we chose together and did together. And we found …
When doing some computer clean-up on this post-Thanksgiving day, I ran across this note I jotted to myself at the beginning of Hanukkah last year … This year we are trying something new: opening all our gifts on the first night of Hanukkah so that we can focus on family activities the rest of the …
I love adding Jewish elements to our Thanksgiving celebration (and to any aspect of daily life when the connection is authentic). It’s not hard to find Jewish connections to gratitude and giving thanks. In addition to conversations and activities on Jewish and Thanksgiving values, my children will welcome the Shabbat following Thanksgiving with this sweet and …
This year our Thanksgiving craft is a gratitude chain. Each year my daughter’s preschool class creates a kindness chain and each day at school there’s the opportunity to write down a time when a child showed kindness to another. I absolutely love this idea and so is my daughter. She asked if we could create …
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to focus on sharing gratitude (hoda’ah), or thanks for what we have (hakarat hatov). It’s also the perfect opportunity to teach these values to your children. It’s also an easy time to connect Jewish values with this American holiday. Below are three ways we teach our children about Jewish gratitude …
During this past summer I got into baking challah most Fridays. It was a wonderful way to start a lazy summer day. Mixing ingredients with the kids, squishing and kneading the dough, and being together all makes for some simple family fun. The kids’ first day of summer was a Friday. It was a total sign …
My oldest is eight years old so I’ve been having fun reading Jewish books (PJ Library, we love you and are so thankful you exist!) and making Jewish crafts for a long time. Pinterest has been a great resource to find new ideas and organize the crafts I want to try. But what about the …
