New Year Wake-Up Call

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is just a few days away so today we focused on some self-reflection and intentions for the new year with our New Year Wake-Up Call craft! We again talked about the role of the shofar and how it’s sounded so that we may hear its call and take action. What action is of course up to us … how do we want to respond? How do we want to make ourselves and this world better in the new year? This craft is simple and flexible, can be adapted for different age ranges, and left me feeling inspired to usher in this new year with all kinds of positive hopes and intentions.

What You’ll Need

New Year Wake-Up Call free printable
Decorating materials of your choice – crayons, markers, watercolors, pastels
Pen or word magnets

Putting It Together

Print your New Year Wake-Up Call printable.
Invite your children to color/decorate it as they wish.
Use either pens or word magnets to add words and/or phrases for how they want to respond to the shofar’s call in the coming year (i.e. what intentions do they have to be their best selves in 5787?)
Attach to your fridge so you can see it everyday!

Finished & Loving It!

It’s super hard for me to feel centered and self-reflective. I want to be this way but it’s just not something that I’ve been able to incorporate into my daily habit. I love that Rosh Hashanah is a time that makes us pause and really think about this – to look inside and see ourselves, and ask what we want to change and say goodbye to and what we want to open ourselves up to in the new year.

Looking for simple ways to bring this big concept to my kiddos is something that is often on my mind this time of year ;-). I think this New Year Wake-Up Call is an easy, meaningful and fun way to explore these ideas. And having the finished product on our fridge will help us remember these ideas all year long.

I asked the kiddos how they wanted to decorate their shofar and they chose watercolors, one of our favorite mediums. Then I brought out the surprise: these cute little word magnets! We attached the printable to our fridge, then the boys looked through the magnet container to find words and phrases that they liked that connected to something positive for the new year. This was actually a great sneaky reading practice! They had to read the word magnets in order to choose what worked best for them and not all the words were familiar. Yay!

Having to grab the tiny magnets was also a good fine motor practice. And, in their minds, something new and fun! We did discover that the magnets I bought were not strong enough to stick to the fridge when place on top of the painted shofar. Total bummer but the kids didn’t mind, they just added the words and phrases around the shofar outline.

Using the magnets was a great choice for this age group but this activity could easily be modified for younger or older ages. For younger, they could decorate the printable and then you could just have a conversation about what it means to hear the shofar and list some actions you could take in the new year. You could also write a few words for them, if they are able to articulate their intentions. For older kids, you can invite them to handwrite their intentions in the shofar outline like I did. After my boys were finished with theirs, I sat down with a cup of tea and finally gave myself 5 minutes to self-reflect. I quickly filled up the shofar with all kinds of hopes, dreams, intentions and goals for this new year. I let myself hear the shofar’s call and I really hope I rise up and act on all these beautiful intentions!