My kindergartner is very much interested in counting right now so I knew he’d love this Hanukkah twist on a spindle box, our Hanukkah Candle Counting Box! It’s super simple to make and so fun to use Hanukkah candles as our counting manipulatives!
What You’ll Need
- Small box
- Paint (optional)
- Extra cardboard
- Scissors
- Glue gun
- White or silver sharpie or paint pen
- Hanukkah candles
- Favorite Hanukkah book about Hanukkah candles and Hanukkiyot, like Light the Menorah (optional)
Putting It Together
- Cut the top flaps off a smallish box (make sure you measure that it has enough space for 10-11 compartments).
- Cut 9-10 pieces of cardboard that match the width and depth of the box. These will be your compartment dividers.
- Paint all cardboard, if desired.
- Glue the cardboard compartment dividers into your box. Make sure you leave enough space for a pile of Hanukkah candles to fit in each compartment. You can make all compartments equally sized or larger towards the right of the box, which will house your larger numbers of candles.
- Write the number for each compartment on the side of the box with your sharpie or paint pen. I did numbers 0-9 because I want my child to practice thinking about the number 0 as having no physical objects. I went up to 9 because that’s how much my small box allowed. Otherwise I would probably go to at least 10 (or 20 if you want to practice counting that high!).
- Set up a tray or just clear some tabletop space and set out your Hanukkah Candle Counting Box and Hanukkah candles.
- Invite your child to look at the number on each compartment, then count out the corresponding number of candles, then place those candles in their corresponding compartment.
- I also set out our Hanukkah number flash cards from our Hanukkah Activities Packet for Early Learners for added number recognition and practice. For each number, we looked at the corresponding card, the number on the compartment, then counted out the corresponding number of candles.
- If you have a favorite Hanukkah book that features the hanukkiah, this is a prefect activity to read it with!
Finished & Loving It!
We made our first spindle box for Tu B’Shevat, our Tu B’Shevat Nature Spindle Box, and my then-preschooler loved it. He knew exactly what to do when he saw this new Hanukkah Candle Counting Box today! It is such great practice of one to one correspondence and counting out individual objects.
The Hanukkah candles are perfect manipulatives to practice counting. They are easy to grab even with small fingers. And your kiddo can recognize and connect them to the holiday. And you can always reuse them for your actual hanukkiah lighting in addition to this math fun!
To see my kiddo counting out his candles using this Hanukkah Candle Counting Box, be sure to check out our reel on Instagram! It also includes some action videos of my kindergartener engaging in many of the counting activities available in our Hanukkah Activities Packet for Early Learners! It was a morning of counting fun and he was ALL ABOUT IT!!
We have a whole page dedicated to Hanukkah, our Hanukkah Hub. Check it out! It includes some of the Hanukkah activities we plan to do this year, as well as the activities we’ve done in previous years.
And don’t forget our Hanukkah Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, a wonderful way to introduce Hanukkah! And, now we also have all 13 Jewish holidays bundled together in A Year of Jewish Holidays 3 Part Cards.
If you want to go full-on Hanukkah with your littles, you must try our Hanukkah Activities Packet for Early Learners! I am so excited about all the Hanukkah-themed literacy, fine motor skills, math, and play fun!
The following sites are amazing resources for learning more about this holiday:
Chag Sameach!
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