Raising children in love and faith
As tonight’s latkes were finishing frying, I looked down and saw my kids playing with their duplo blocks. And not just playing, but creating some awesome Hanukkah Judaica: a duplo block Hanukkiah. It was awesome! And it became our centerpiece for the 5th night celebrations. Seeing them create this Hanukkiah, and have such pleasure in …
With a bunch of five to seven year olds I knew I needed a fun, but easy Hanukkah party for my classroom to celebrate the holiday this year. And because I’m their teacher, it also had to be educational and meaningful. I came up with the following plan and we all had a great time! …
The kids (both at home and in my classroom!) made a new Hanukkah decoration this year: Hanukkah Mixed Media Collages! We all know making artwork for the holidays is always a fun way to review the holiday story, share traditions or symbols of the holiday, and make a nice decoration for your house. Using different …
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 …
