Shavuot is a favorite holiday for many and I hope you find some inspiration for exploring it with your family with our 2024 Shavuot Shelfie + Starter Activities post! Torah, flowers, and dairy come together for a joyous, delicious and beautiful celebration!
What You’ll Need
- Your favorite books about Shavuot (check out our recommendations here!)
- Your favorite Shavuot arts, crafts, toy sets, and activities that you already own and/or look below to see if any of ours inspire you to create similar ones!
Putting It Together
Here is the list of activities that I set up. Get inspired or grab whatever of your own! I also plan to add new activities as we create them to this Shavuot Shelfie.
- Shavuot Book Box
- Shavuot Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards
- Ice Cream Measure + Cut Invitation
- 10 Commandments Cardboard Tablets
- 10 Commandments 3 Part Cards
- Lee Laa Lou’s Shavuot Activity Booklet
- Book of Ruth 3 Part Cards
- Nature Suncatcher
- Torah Scribe Writing
- Shavuot Counting Cards Sensory Bin Match
- Pasta Flower Art
- Straw + Pipe Cleaner Flower Posting
Finished & Loving It!
Shavuot Book Box
We made this sweet Shavuot Book Box years ago. Coffee filter flowers are super easy to make and such a fun science-y exploration for kids. Guess what? We are doing them again this year, just with a slightly different invitation. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to see what we create!
The practicalities of a themed Book Box means all our books are gathered in one spot, making it easy to read about the holiday. I also love the way it looks 🙂
Shavuot Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards
I think books are such a wonderful way to introduce a topic, but I am also partial to the 3 Part Cards I’ve created. These Shavuot 3 Part Cards state the main description of the holiday and include traditions and customs and how we celebrate it. It’s the perfect short and sweet activity that is not only quick, but really does convey a lot of learning.
These cards can always be used as or with supplemental activities as well. Print multiple copies and create a matching or memory game. Grab one card and do an activity on that specific theme. For this holiday, you could easily grab the card that describes the custom of decorating with flowers and greenery and do any number of supplemental activities related to that theme. And, as I’m sure you can guess, we have multiple such activities on this shelfie and in our plan for this year’s Shavuot unit!
Ice Cream Measure + Cut Invitation
I was so inspired by the sweet Daffodil Measuring & Cutting invitation I saw shared on @little.learner.playground‘s Instagram account that I was excited to make my own with a Shavuot twist. Of course daffodils would also work for a Shavuot activity, as they represent when Mount Sinai burst into blooms upon the Torah being given to the Israelites.
However, I was looking for an ice cream activity to represent that Shavuot tradition (we eat dairy foods to remind us of how the Torah and the land of Israel are sweet like milk and honey). So of course I had to make my own version!
For this Ice Cream Measure + Cut Invitation, I had the kids count each of the rectangles which measured one inch. Then they wrote how many rectangles/inches there were for each ice cream cone. I also invited them, if they wished, to cut either the rectangles as inch strips, or, as my ambitious first grader did, cut out each rectangle.
My preschooler also chose to cut the cones out. In @little.learner.playground‘s invitation, she already had pre-cut the different daffodil invitations. You could do that for this ice cream invitation (cutting off the prompt at the top or leaving it) or invite your kiddos to do that before they cut the rectangles.
Another extension option would be to color in each rectangle, counting as they do. Lots of fun options with this one!
Print your free Ice Cream Measure + Cut Printable here!
10 Commandments Cardboard Tablets
We made these cardboard 10 Commandments Tablets years ago. I like that they were simple and added not only a little decoration to our Shelfie, but also some content!
I believe this text feels kid-friendly while also explaining, at least to our family, the heart of what each commandment means. I’ve used the same language in our 10 Commandments 3 Part Cards. You can use it yourself, if it speaks to you, while teaching about the 10 Commandments, or exploring some fun supplemental activities about them.
There are numerous ways to make 10 Commandment Tablets. Last year we did foil printing and I love the way they turned out. And yep, I have something special in store for this year too!!
Print your free 10 Commandments List here.
10 Commandments 3 Part Cards
Yep, I couldn’t leave out an opportunity for some quick and easy 10 Commandment learning by using our 10 Commandments 3 Part Cards! These use the language I mentioned above and are a great way to introduce or review each commandment, work on matching skills by matching the images, and early reading skills by reading the summaries.
Lee Laa Lou’s Shavuot Activity Booklet
We love all of Lee Laa Lou’s products and find their holiday activity booklets such wonderful ways to learn and explore the holiday while having fun and practicing Hebrew! They are inexpensive and really do offer helpful summaries of the holidays and customs, as well as printed activity invitations that my kids enjoy. Highly recommend all of them, including their Shavuot Activity Booklet!
Book of Ruth 3 Part Cards
Another Shavuot tradition is to read the Book of Ruth. Last year I created these Book of Ruth 3 Part Cards to of course make the story more accessible to my children. The summaries are short and cover the main points of the story. The images invite the children to practice matching (and help those pre-readers understand the story even if they can’t yet read the summaries). And the summaries help practice those reading skills!
Nature Suncatcher
It’s been awhile since we’ve made suncatchers and they really are so easy. These Nature Suncatchers are not only super simple to set up and create, they are just so lovely to look at!
I cut the centers out of the paper plates and gathered some of our garden flowers. After peeling off the backing to the contact paper squares (the hardest part of the activity, ha!) we stuck it to the back of the plates. Then the kids could add the flowers however they wish and create their own super sweet Nature Suncatchers. Stick another piece of contact paper over the front to seal everything together. Set out on a shelf or better yet, tape to a window to get that full suncatcher potential! BEAUTIFUL!
The kids absolutely loved handling the real flowers. And of course real flowers are perfect for Shavuot! Here are a few ways we’ve used real flowers in our Shavuot explorations:
- Shavuot Playdough Invitation
- Flower Soup
- Mount Sinai Fower and Color Match Sensory Bin
- Mount Sinai Nature Scavenger Hunt
- Shavuot Frozen Flower Play
Torah Scribe Writing
This was one of the kids’ favorite activities this Shelfie! And of course, it’s so simple! You know I love simple, meaningful fun! Cut out a torah shape, get a fake feather, pour some black paint into a bowl then invite your children to be scribes and create a Torah!
This is a lovely way to talk about how Torahs are made. Each Torah scroll is handwritten! A special ritual scribe, called a sofer, has to be trained in the specific Hebrew calligraphy used in Torah scrolls. I loved that they got to learn about the process of traditional Torah scroll scribing and be their own little scribes too!
I was a super happy Ima when my daughter asked to write out the Alef Bet on her Torah scroll. Yes please!! Love when art and invitations can spark learning like this!
Shavuot Counting Cards Sensory Bin Match
If you haven’t tried fake flowers (these are cut from fake leis) as a sensory filler, you are missing out! We used this filler last year for our 10 Commandments Search & Find Sensory Bin and it was absolutely lovely. I wanted to get that same soft tactile feedback opportunities for this year too.
This year I poured both of the Shavuot Counting Cards I’ve created–10 Commandments Counting Cards and Shavuot Counting Cards–into the sensory bin and covered them with the fake flowers. I challenged the kids to find each of the cards, then set them out numerically, matching the numbers. This was indeed a challenge because the images are different as they came from two different sets. So the kids had to either recognize the numerals and/or count either the images or the dots to know which number card they had and then match them.
You could of course print double of the same counting card set for an easier match, especially for younger kids who are still learning to recognize and count numerals. But this was a fun way to use what we already had ready and see if they could meet that extra challenge!
Pasta Flower Art
I am so excited about this invitation, the possibilities and the creations my kiddos made! Aren’t these just so sweet? I used green cardstock for the background to represent Mount Sinai. Then set out a whole bunch of different shape/types of pasta. The children could whichever ones they wanted to create their Mount Sinai flowers!
My daughter was so proud of her dandelion. And my first grader loved his flower with spokes of grass. Not sure what the preschooler created, but kid-made in our house is truly kid-made!
I told the kids I’d leave out the pasta and they could use as they desired in the coming days. I foresee some more glued on pasta art. But there could also be pasta beading and so much more!
Straw + Pipe Cleaner Flower Posting
This is another sweet flower invitation, this one also focusing on some fine motor skill practices. The setup took me a little more time to prep but not too much. I unfolded one of the pasta boxes then painted it green. When dry, I used a glue gun to glue on the 5 plastic straws. I quickly cut 5 flowers from foam sheets and added them to pipe cleaners.
The size of the pipe cleaners and straws is so close that you really have to focus, coordinate and aim to stick the pipe cleaner flower stem into the straw. A perfect opportunity for practicing those skills! And how darling does it look with all the flowers standing upright? Love this one!
I loved watching my children explore this year’s 2024 Shavuot Shelfie + Starter Activities! There’s so much they remember from year to year and they are so excited to share this knowledge. Observing them practice their skills, create beautiful art, and explore Jewish learning together really is just the best! May you find some inspiration here to invite the same into your house!
Chag Sameach!
We have a whole page dedicated to Shavuot, our Shavuot Hub. Check it out! It includes some of the Shavuot activities we plan to do this year, as well as the activities we’ve done in previous years.
And don’t forget our Shavuot Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, a wonderful way to introduce Shavuot! And, now we also have all 13 Jewish holidays bundled together in A Year of Jewish Holidays 3 Part Cards.
The following sites are amazing resources for learning more about this holiday:
Chag Sameach!
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