The Hardest Word Activity: A Yom Kippur Craft

Last year we put together this simple The Hardest Word Activity: A Yom Kippur Craft to help us reflect, repent and resolve to do better in the new year.

What You’ll Need

The PJ Library book The Hardest Word or listen to a reading of it on their Facebook page.
Kraft paper or poster board
Red construction paper
Yellow construction paper
Purple construction paper
Marker
Scissors
Glue

Putting It Together

Read or listen to the the PJ Library book The Hardest Word
Trace your child’s hands on red paper. Cut out.
Trace their feet on yellow paper. Cut out.
Cut out the Ziz’s body from yellow paper.
Trace a hand on purple paper. Cut out.
Glue these shapes onto your Kraft paper or poster board in the shape of the Ziz.
Cut out shapes (we did cloud shapes) from whichever color paper you’d like. Write things you are sorry about on each card.
Glue the cards to the mural.
Attach the mural to your wall.
Talk about the importance of saying sorry, repenting, and resolving not to do it again and how it relates to Yom Kippur and your family.

Finished & Loving It!

In the book The Hardest Word, the Ziz teaches us that the hardest word to say, and actually mean, is “I’m sorry.” Since we don’t have this book at home I was bummed I wouldn’t get to borrow it from our synagogue to read to the kids and do an I’m sorry activity related to it as part of our observance of Yom Kippur last year. Then I saw that PJ Library posted a video on their Facebook page of the author, Jacqueline Jules, reading the book! Perfect!

Last year we watched the read aloud then made this The Hardest Word Activity: A Yom Kippur Craft. We traced the kids’ hands and feet to make the Ziz. We talked about about specific things we are sorry for and how even though it may be hard to think and say that we are sorry for them, how important it is for the people we hurt, and for ourselves, to do so.

The Ziz and our sorry cards remained on our wall for awhile to remind us of our sorries and our promises to do better in 5781.

This year we brought out the mural again. I still don’t own the book (I need to rectify that!) so we listened to the read aloud again. We then reflected on what our current sorries were and added them to the mural just like we did last year.

My hope is that doing this The Hardest Word Activity: A Yom Kippur Craft and having the visual reminder will help us remember, acknowledge, repent and resolve to do better in this new year of 5782.