Annual Dreidel Hunt

Before - the kids assigned point values for each catagory of dreidels. Here are a few examples.

After - we tallied up the results.


The annual flashlight dreidel hunt wa a huge success. We turned off all the lights. The parents hid the dreidels and the kids hid their eyes. With flashlights and Hanukkah bags in hand, they tore through the house in search of the obvious and not so obvious hidden dreidels. With points ranging from 2 to 50, it was anyone's game.

Hanukkah Jukebox Night via Skype

Tonight was Hanukkah with the grandparents. A special thanks to Skype who made it possible for us to celebrate Hanukkah together. In preparation for our "skype night," the kids prepared a jukebox list of songs for their grandparents to choose from for our Hanukkah sing-along. The grandparents enjoyed calling out A-7. We all started off Ma-oz-oar. Next, B-13 was a fun rendition of Oh Hanukah Oh Hanukkah. It was another memorable night!

Creating Hanukkah Memories Night 1 5772

Which candles burned the longest?

The kids have fun choosing just the right combination of candles in hopes of owning the chanukiyah that has the candles that burn the longest! We keep track on a chart. We can't wait to see the face of our youngest when he wakes up to find out that his candles burned longer than everyone else's candles!

We also read a Hanukkah story each night. Everyone gave Lots of Laktas by Sandy Lanton two thumbs up!

Happy Hanukkah!

The kids set up a chart this year to keep track of the longest lasting candles.

Encouraging Seder Questions

We wanted to encourage all the children at our seder to ask questions throughout the seder this year. We tossed mutli colored clothes pins around our table. We hung a large clothes line rope along our doorway. We began the seder by introducing the idea that we would tally up all our seder questions using clothes pins. Next, everyone took a guess of how many questions would be asked. As the seder went along, the kids (and adults) hung clothespins along the rope. The highest guess was 27. We had 36 questions in by the end of the seder.

A possible twist...you could have each child or family have their own color of clothespins. We wanted to stay away from our seder feeling competitive. But, it may work as an alternative to motivate each child to participate.

Planting for Pesach

Many stores with garden shops sell plastic window pots, potting soil and assorted seeds.

We planted grass seed in our first pot. We hope it will grow so we can use it as our centerpiece at the seder table. We plan to use blue gravel in the middle with a toy baby in a basket. Do you think our guests will know it's baby Moses floating in a basket near the reeds in the Nile River?

We had fun planting our parsley seeds, nuturing them and watching them grow. We hope they will be grown in time for our seder plates!

Printable Passover Games

CAJE has some great printable games to make for your children or students. They can take a Passover journey, collect items for their seder plate, or fold origami frogs. Some of the games might be great hands on things for your Seder table. Finding the right thing to help the children in your life connect to Passover can make all the difference in making the holiday meaningful and memorable. Our daughter is studying Japan in school and we can't wait to make origami frogs together! Check it out.

http://www.cajestl.org/

Experience Building This Passover

Here is a fun one the kids planned out for their cousins who are coming for Passover this year.

Each child or pair of children will be given a bag of materials to use to create an Epyptian city or pyramid. I recently was part of an interesting conversation about whether or not the Jewish slaves historically built the pyramids. So far, my research seems to indicate that the Jews were not part of the pyramid building. So, whether it's pyramids or high buildings for Pharoah..they can still build.

You can use a variety of materials for the bags.

My kids came up with wooden blocks, bristle blocks, wedgits, marshmellows, kosher for passover cotton candy, craninum noodles, legos and a deck of cards. We can't wait to see all the creations! Please share any other building materials idea you have with us!

Shoe Boxes at Your Seder Table

Here's a fun way we plan to re-tell the Passover story this year at our Seder table.

We packed up several shoe boxes with props. We will hand them out and ask our seder guests to share a section of Maggid (the Passover story) using the props inside the shoe box.

Here's what we packed up:

Box # 1 A baby doll, a blue roll for clear gift wrap, a basket, a princess doll and a groovy girl doll.

(Yes, our hope is that they will share Baby Moses in the Nile River)

Box # 2 A sheep, a stick, a middle aged Moses puppet (www.chaikids.com) , a small tree (purchased in the dollar bin this week at Target) and some orange streamers.

(Yes, our hope is that they will share the burning bush story)

Box # 3 A bag of ten plauges props and our small Pharoah and Moses plastic figures (purchased from www.chaikids.com)

(We can't wait to hear "Let My People Go!")

Box # 4 A big blue sheet and lots of small "people" from assorted sets and games the kids have in the house

(We can't wait to see all our old toys cross the Red Sea)

We are excited to see how our guests bring their shoe boxes to life! The dolls can easily be substituted with magazine or internet cut outs glued onto popsicle sticks!

How We Live, Not How Long We Live

This past Friday night, a surprising conversation came up at our dinner table. My daughter mentioned that she learned Moses had a very long life and so he accomplished many things. OK! It could not believe it. I had spent the last few days thinking about short and long lives as I prepare for my sister's yertzeit coming up this week. My sister did not have a long life. She passed away very suddenly at 32 years old. I was a bit rattled when my daughter brought this up at the table. The question of how much to and how much not to share about her death and death itself with my children has been a journey. But, it seemed like the right time to talk about her upcoming yertzeit. We talked about the concept that the accomplishments of our lives have very little to do with how long we lived but how we lived. This preliminary discussion about how we spend the time we have was meaningful. I realize it's a conversation we need to keep having over and over again. I look forward to continuing to share with them them all the wonderful gifts my sister shared and the details of her very accomplished life. May her memory be a blessing.

Our 30 Day Shevat Challenge

Our 30 Shevat Challenge

The Hebrew month of Shevat is the perfect time to reconnect with nature, trees, gardening, and Israel. It's also the right time to revisit and evaluate ourselves as a family who is striving to be more "green." So, we are taking a 30 day challenge.

We will begin on Thursday, January 6th.

Here's our plan for the first few days:

1 Shevat - Create a tally chart to see just how many plastic bags we use in one week.

2 Shevat- Talk about the devestating fires in Israel. Collect our pre-Shabbat tzedakah from our family for this cause. http://jnf.org/

3 Shevat- Eat under a tree and read Curious George Plants A Tree and begin the book Going Green by David and Patricia Armentrout

4 Shevat-Find 25 household items that do not get much attention and put the 3R's to use- Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse!

We would love to hear your ideas too! We want to have 30 meaningful days. Please share your ideas in the comments section. Thanks!