Au Pair Chatter

Šárka from the Czech Republic made some great Advent calendars for her host kids, too!
Check out the pictures below.

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is one of the most joyous times of the Jewish year. The reason for the celebration is twofold (both dating back to c. 165 BC and the miraculous military victory of the small, ill-equipped Jewish army over the ruling Greek Syrians, who had banned the Jewish religion and desecrated the Temple and the miracle of the small cruse of consecrated oil, which burned for eight days in the Temple’s menorah instead of just one.

Hanukkah is often celebrated by:

• Lighting a menorah for eight nights with olive oil or wax candles; one on the first night and an additional one each succeeding night, so that the last night has eight lights
• Eating food fried in oil, especially potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts
• Playing with a dreidle, a four-sided top; the player wins or loses money depending on which side it lands on (each is marked with a different Hebrew letter)
• Celebrating with family and friends

Here are some websites with activities for the kids:

Hanukkah Coloring Pages

Crafts and Activities

Dreidel Hanukkah Cookies

As promised at last night’s meeting, I am posting some photos and links that will assist you in doing a few of the projects I have given you.

Newspaper Seedling Cups

Click on the photo below to go to a web page with step by step photos and directions for the seedling cup I showed you at the meeting.   If you have older kids and are looking for something more to do with them, there are lots of videos on YouTube of how to make these using all kinds of different techniques including some origami folds.

Newspaper Seedling Pot

Butterfly Craft

Click on the photo below to go to a web page with complete project instructions.

Butterfly Craft Project

Shamrock Decoration

Below is a picture of what the completed shamrock project might look like.  They can be decorated using paint, markers, crayons, glitter glue and stickers.

Shamrock Decorations

I hope you will use these ideas as a starting point to come up with lots of other fun projects and activities to do with the kids.

Looking for ideas to keep the kids busy on this snow day?

Here is a simple snow day game plan…

1. Play in the snow
2. Come inside and warm up with hot chocolate (don’t forget the marshmallows)
3. Do some Snowflake Crafts
4. Play in the snow again
5. Warm up inside taking turns on the Make a Snowflake Website
6. Get a jump start on making Valentine’s Cards

Have fun!

If you have some fun snow day ideas, please share them by posting a comment.