A Guide to Teaching Hanukkah Traditions to Children

A Guide to Teaching Hanukkah Traditions to Children - Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish celebration of lights, this year it starts at sundown Sunday the 21. Of December, and it takes place each year in the end of the calendar year. Teaching the importance, history and the beautiful story behind Hanukkah to our kids is not only necessary but also important. The traditions and beautiful story of Hanukkah is taught best to children through games, activities, crafts and visual aids, but is not only meant for kids who's families practice the Jewish traditions, all children will benefit from learning different believes, traditions and history.

Books with illustrations are great visual aids to teach kids the story behind Hanukkah. By The Hanukkah Light by Sheldon Oberman, When Mindy Saved Hanukkah by Eric Kimmel, Light the Lights! A Story about Celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas by Margaret Moorman are just some of the great illustrated books you can either buy or check it out at your local library. Make a list of books that illustrates Hanukkah or tell the story to older kids, hand them out to your kids or in the classroom for your pupils to check out the ones they like at their local public school library.

When you are dealing with younger kids it can be to overwhelming for them to learn too much history at once. You should start by generating an interest in the subject. A great exercise and activity is coloring. Print out or copy from a book some Hanukkah drawings or symbols like The Star of David, dreidels and menorahs. A great craft project for you and your kids would be to make your own wrapping paper, take any kind of basic color paper and cut out Hanukkah symbols and pictures and glue them on, Your kids would be proud of their craft project and it would lead to a natural discussion of what the symbols and pictures mean and the story behind Hanukkah.

A more modern and interactive way of teaching children about Hanukkah is on www. tv.disney.go.com where they have provided delightful print outs to aid your children's education about Hanukkah. Your Kids can read about the wonderful Hanukkah celebration. The site offers to print out The Little Einstein's Menorah, where they can place a new flame on the menorah candle and they can print out The Little Einstein's Dreidel, the traditional game that is played each Hanukkah, spin the dreidle and see which little Einstein is wishing you happy Hanukkah.

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