Parshas Vayechi

I can confidently say that we are very proud supporters of Costco's Kirkland Baby-wipes and Kitchen wipes. I came across another mom blog out there and she brilliantly used the caps of these wipes to make a calendar for her kids.

Now a big goal of mine, being a Jewish homeschooling mom, is taking these awesome idea's and giving them a Jewish twist. So I started saving all the caps of all the wipes but just couldn't come up with a good idea of how to use them in a Jewish way.

Until.... this weeks parshah, where Yakov is blessing his 12 sons. I figured we could tie it all together and give each Shevet the color of their stone on the Kohen Gadols Choshen (High Priests Breast Plate) and then we could use this in a few weeks time again when we learn about the garments of the Kohanim and Kohen Gadol.

So here is how it went:

We hot glued a piece of felt to a card board box cover (one of those office boxes from Office Max). We then hot glued the caps of the wipes onto the felt like this:

Then each munchkin got 6 cards to color specific colors (the color of each Shevets stone)

We then glued the cards onto the tops of the caps and wrote each Shevets name on the correct color card, in order:

I then made a copy of the cover of My Parsah Reader- Sefer Bereishis and laminated it. We cut each one out and stuck a little Velcro sticker behind each one. Each picture depicts the blessing that Yakov gave each son:

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?? The kids LOVE using it and we talk about the different blessings and who got what and where it goes. Just looking at it is so enjoyable. And it was super easy.

Here is a cute little Menashe and Efraim project we made:

That's Yakov in the middle. We acted out the story of Yakov blessing them and switching his hands. That's Efraim on the left, my son made him "special" clothes since he got the first bracha.

Here's another one we did- I just drew the outline of 2 men and the kiddos each colored and glued and stuck whatever they wanted on each man. The Alef is for Efraim and the Mem is for Menashe.

They then traced their hands and we were able to switch the hands to show how Yakov switched his hands.

And here's a really great Alef Beis project that my daughter LOVED. Just cut out colored strips, long and short but make sure they are all the same size. Use one long one and one short one to make templates of the Hebrew Alphabet and have the kids glue on the correct sticks to each letter.

And that's what we've been up to. Have a great week!