PAINTED WOOD LOVE HEART
As the Beatles famously sang, “All you need is love;” and on Tu B’Av, love is indeed what we need! Celebrate the Jewish holiday of love with a festive Painted Wood Love Heart — you can give it as a gift to a cherished loved one, or you can display it prominently in your home to remind you and your family of the power of love!
HEBREW LETTER SOAP CARVINGS
Your kiddos will love lathering up some fun and learning the Hebrew Alef Bet with this joyful craft! When I was a little girl, we sometimes did soap carvings at my daycare, and I loved it so much, I still remember it to this day. It’s such a fun activity and it’s perfect to do outside on a summer day! Believe it or not, the main tool for the carving is a jumbo paper clip, and it’s very satisfying to scrape away the soap to reveal the Hebrew letters! I made a PDF that includes each Hebrew letter sized to fit on an Ivory bar of soap (the best kind to use for soap carving). Happy carving!
TIKKUN OLAM SPARKS TRACKER
Howard Schwartz’s book Gathering Sparks is perfect for teaching children the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam — repairing the world. In the book, he writes, “For every good deed you do, one of those hidden sparks rises up and a little bit of the world is repaired.” What a wonderful visual to understand that when we do something helpful or kind, it really does make a positive difference. Your kiddos will love keeping track of their “sparks” and seeing that they’re helping make the world a better place with this Tikkun Olam Sparks Tracker (link to the free PDF below). When they fill up one chart, they can start a new one! To keep things interesting, there are three different versions. It would be fun to collect them in a binder for a full year to see how many “sparks” your kiddos collect!
I CAN DO A MITZVAH - NECKLACE
This gorgeous necklace coordinates with every outfit — that’s because mitzvot are always in style! Doing a mitzvah will be top of mind for your kiddos once they make this fun and meaningful craft. And if they’re anything like my kindergarten students, they will LOVE using a hole puncher — always a crowd pleaser! The TEMPLATE comes with eight different mitzvot (e.g., donating food, taking care of the earth, being welcoming when guests visit) and also eight blank squares so that you and your kiddos can brainstorm more mitzvah ideas!
LOVE ROCKS
As we start the new year fresh, it’s so important that we do our very best to act with love, kindness, and respect in everything we do. These beautiful Love Rocks can remind us to do just that! Have your kiddos paint a bunch of Love Rocks and then give them to people they care about. Make sure they save one or two for themselves so they can have their own reminders to be a mensch, too!
I’M SORRY CARDS
Many of our Jewish holidays are joyful, and making crafts to celebrate them is fun and easy. Yom Kippur, of course, is a serious holiday. As we shift gears from the merriment of Rosh Hashanah, we take a close and honest look at the mistakes we’ve made in the last year. And although children don’t fast or participate in the traditional Yom Kippur services, they definitely can understand the concepts of “I’ve made mistakes;” “I need to apologize;” and “I can try my best to do better in the new year.” Making I’m Sorry Cards (and also I’m Sorry Hearts) gives children a tangible way to think about what it means to make a mistake or hurt someone’s feelings and what we must do to make that right. Here’s hoping that this simple Yom Kippur craft will lay the foundation for your children to be dedicated to honesty, humility, kindness, and forgiveness throughout their lives.
I’M SORRY HEARTS
Yom Kippur gives us an opportunity to teach our children important lessons about recognizing that we’ve made mistakes, we need to apologize for them, and we need to try our best to do better next time. It can be tough to say “I’m sorry” at any age, but making “I’m sorry” hearts can make it a little easier. Your kiddos can decorate these mini wood hearts however they like and then write “I’m sorry” on each of them. When they feel ready, they can give an “I’m sorry” heart to someone whose feelings they’ve hurt. This gives them a tangible way to experience owning up to a mistake and hopefully experiencing forgiveness, too. How could you not forgive someone who’s given you a beautiful “I’m sorry” heart?
APPLE FLOWERS IN VASE
Make your Rosh Hashannah extra beautiful by creating an apple “flower” bouquet and putting them in a vase (a recycled bottle works great). You and your family will have an extra festive and sweet new year celebration with this unique and meaningful display! It makes a great table centerpiece, too!
SHOFAR COLLAGE WITH MAGAZINE CLIPPINGS
Did you know that the central mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is to hear the shofar? The shofar is also blown every day (except Shabbat) during the month of Elul, which is the Jewish month that leads up to Rosh Hashanah, and at the end of Yom Kippur. Hearing the shofar wakes us up, connects us to God and to each other, and reminds us that we still have work to do to make the world a better place. This shofar collage is a great way to explore the unique shape of the shofar and to talk about how it’s used during the high holy days. If possible, have a real shofar for your kiddos to touch and look at (and practice blowing!) while they’re making their collages!
CORK-STAMPED APPLE CARDS
Looking for a creative and simple way for your kiddos to make homemade Rosh Hashanah cards? Look no further — these Cork-Stamped Apple Cards are so fun to make, and they look beautiful! Kids will love dipping the cork into paint and then stamping it onto a blank card to create an apple. They can create traditional apple colors — red, green, and yellow — and/or they can paint with other bright colors, too! Try pink, purple, blue, turquoise! Friends and family will surely be filled with joy when they receive your festive cards!
CHALLAH COVER FOR ROSH HASHANNAH
Make a special challah cover for your Rosh Hashannah challah! We make our challah round for Rosh Hashannah because it reminds us of the continuing full cycle of the Jewish year. Your beautiful challah needs a beautiful cover — decorate it with pictures of apples and honey, shofars, and anything else that reminds you of the Jewish New Year! L’Shana Tova!
MY JEWISH YEAR NECKLACE
Did you know that there’s a Jewish calendar that’s different from our secular calendar which starts with January and ends with December? The Jewish calendar starts with the month of Nissan and ends with the month Adar. Pretty cool! You’ll love wearing this fancy schmancy Jewish Year necklace that will help you remember all the Jewish months and be extra excited about the new year!
GREETING CARDS FOR ROSH HASHANNAH
Make Rosh Hashannah extra special for your family and friends by making and sending them Rosh Hashannah greeting cards! Everyone loves receiving a card in the mail, and when your family and friends see that you MADE them one, their new year will surely be off to an extra sweet start! You can use paint, markers, colored pencils, rubber stamps, stickers, or all of the above. Be creative, and be a blessing by sending some new year cheer!
COLLAGE OF CRAFT PUNCH PAPER APPLES
Your kiddos will love creating little paper apples with an apple craft punch and then making a beautiful collage that can be a Rosh Hashanah decoration — or they could do smaller versions on blank cards to create unique Rosh Hashanah cards for family and friends. The possibilities are endless and they’re all sweet, just like your Rosh Hashanah will be!
FABRIC SCRAPS PAPER PLATE APPLE COLLAGE
If you like making collages, you’ll love making this sweet apple decoration! It’s so fun to cut out little pieces of fabric and then glue them to a paper plate. Even more fun than that is making the squiggly “leaf” by wrapping a pipe cleaner around a pencil! When you’re done, you’ll have a fun Rosh Hashannah decoration that’s sure to start your new year on a happy note!
TEENY TINY ROSH HASHANAH CARDS
Won’t your family and friends be tickled pink when you make them a teeny tiny card for Rosh Hashannah? Their small size carries a lot of love! Decorate them however you like and then watch people’s faces light up when you hand deliver a sweet little card to them! You surely will be making Rosh Hashannah extra sweet this year!
MINI CARDBOARD APPLES
How cute are these mini cardboard apples?! Super cute! They’re so fun and easy to paint, too! Once you’ve made a few, you could put them in a bowl for a Rosh Hashannah centerpiece; you could sprinkle them on your Rosh Hashannah table to make it extra colorful and festive; or you could do anything imaginable with them to make your Rosh Hashannah special. I wonder how many you’ll paint and what you’ll do with them!
PAINTED ROCKS FOR ROSH HASHANAH
Oh my goodness! How much do you love these? A lot! I know! Won’t your Rosh Hashannah be extra special with some painted rocks with Rosh Hashannah symbols? You can paint a shofar, apples and honey, a Torah, a synagogue, a Star of David, and so much more! You can use them as a festive centerpiece or you can give them out to some extra special people. However you use them, they’re sure to make this Rosh Hashannah super sweet!
RECYCLED JAR SPICE BOX
On Friday night, we say “hello” to Shabbat, and on Saturday night, once we see three stars in the sky, we say “goodbye” to Shabbat. The Havdalah ceremony is our special farewell party for Shabbat, and we use all of our senses for that bittersweet “goodbye” — tasting the wine, touching and smelling the fragrant spices, watching the flames from the braided candle, and saying and hearing the blessings. Your kiddos will love this simple eco-friendly spice box craft! Just use any recycled jar, fill it with cinnamon sticks and cloves, and decorate the jar with stickers. Your kiddos and your whole family surely will have a SHAVUA TOV (a good week) after smelling the sweet fragrances from your own special spice boxes!
TIKKUN OLAM SUPERHERO CAPE
If you tell your kiddos that they are Tikkun Olam Superheroes and we all need their strength, bravery, and kindness to help save the world, they will be up, up, and away in a flash! Tikkun Olam, which means “repair the world,” is a central Jewish value that calls on everyone to do mitzvot and everything possible to fix what is broken in our world so that it may become whole. Help your little superheroes look the part by letting them create their very own Tikkun Olam superhero cape. They can make a matching superhero mask, too! In the wise words of Spiderman (although it sounds like something Moses could have said): “With great power comes great responsibility.” Indeed it does!