Montessori-Inspired hands-on Activities for every Parshah in Chumash Shemot!

 

Montessori-Inspired hands-on Activities for every Parshah in Chumash Shemot!

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Montessori Activities for Parshas Vayakhel-Pikudei

Montessori Activities for Parshas Vayakhel-Pikudei

 Click here to download Parshas Vayakhel printable pdf.

Click Here to download  Parshas Pikudei printable pdf.

Hope this is helpful, enjoy!

Beautiful Dvar Torah Book for Kids- a Book Review

Let your child shine at the Shabbos and Yom Tov table!

This is a beautiful compilation of Divrei Torah written in a clear and simple style for children to read and share at the Shabbos table.

Here is a sample Dvar Torah from Parshas Lech Lecha:

The font is large, the words and ideas are simple. This book is such a wonderful addition to your Shabbos table.

Books can be purchased

Here

and Here

Habe a wonderful week!

Always,

Great New Parsha Coloring Pages

I wanted to let you know about a fabulous new Parsha resource that is being developed. 

I love using the free and adorable coloring pages from www.ChallahCrumbs.com (I use all their Alef Bet pages, you can check them out here)

www.ChallahCrumbs.com has launched a kickstarter campaign to raise money to make a more updated version of weekly Parsha coloring pages. Their goal is to raise enough money to make 54 sheets -- one for each Parsha. Be a part of this amazing project and help make it happen! 

Here's the link if you would like to contribute! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2086923936/parsha-coloring-pages-a-little-more-for-your-fridg

Have a wonderful week,

Always,

Adorable Well Project for Parshas Chayei Sara

For this weeks Parshah, my son was set on making a REAL Well (one that he could actually put water into and draw it out with a bucket) but he also wanted to use his craft sticks which he really enjoys doing crafts with.

After a little research, I figured out a great idea where he could have a 'real' well and use his craft sticks too... what do you think?

Here are some of the supplies we used:

Here are the steps to making your own Well:

1. Get an empty plastic water bottle and cut two squares out of the top sides of the water bottle.

2. Using craft sticks, glue them around the bottom of the water bottle as well as one on each side. We put rubber bands around the craft sticks while it was drying to keep them from sliding off. You can use a glue gun too, but my little guy wanted to do the gluing himself.

3. Once dry, using a hole puncher, punch a hole in the plastic next to the tops of each craft stick used to support the bucket (see photo above).

4. Using a thin stick (we used a broken paint brush) tie a string/piece of ribbon to the top and attach a mini bucket (we used a mini mug) to the bottom of the string.

5. Stick the stick with the bucket through the holes, fill the well up with water, and voila! There you have it :)

Hope you are enjoying your week,

Always,

Montessori Activities for Chumash Bereishit

Over the past few weeks I have been putting together a booklet of activities that we have done for each weeks Parshah. Feel free to download it and use any ideas for your own kids or your students.

Click Here to download Montessori Activities for Chumash Bereishit

You will have 6 Montessori inspired activities for each Parshah in Chumash Bereishit.

Enjoy and have a wonderful week!

Always, 

Toldot Trays

Some activities for this weeks Parshah~

TOLDOT

Making little replicas of Yakov and Eisav to reenact the story- includes a Torah for Yakov to learn, weapons for Eisav to hunt with and a bowl of lentils:

A RED Collage since Eisavs skin and hair was RED (I put red food coloring in the glue, came out pretty cool):

In connection to Yitzchak "feeling" Eisavs hairy body (which was actually Yakov) this is a classic Montessori activity- get lots of different fabrics with different textures. Cut them in two and place half the fabrics in a bag or box and half in a basket. Have the kids pick one piece of fabric, feel it, touch it and then close their eyes and using their sense of touch, try to find the matching piece of fabric in the bag or box: 

Since Rivkah helped Yakov cover himself in fur, we made beards and arm covers: 

In connection to twins, even though Yakov and Eisav were such opposites, this is just a color matching game with stickers:

I wish I were more consistent in posting what we do each week, but like they say- Life happens and we all get caught up in day to day activities. 

I am working on putting together an e-book of all our Parshah activities so hopefully that will be helpful when it is complete!

Wishing you a wonderful week,

Always, 

New York, New York! My "Mom-cation"

This past week my little sister got married in New York. Now my hubby and I were going back and forth about whether we would go as a family or just I would go. 

After agreeing that flying with 5 kids under 6 for 12 hours just wouldn't be the best idea, we opted that I would go. By myself. Alone. Solo. Just Moi.

Yes, that's me in the photo. In the city I grew up in. The absolute greatest city in the world. 

I spent some great time with my family, my good friends from high school and ran into friends that I hadn't seen in years. 

The only time I was in a car was to and from the airport. The rest of the time I walked or went by Subway. Ah, city life. It was an unbelievable week in every sense of the word. 

Here is a photo of what my freezer looked like the day before I left. I always marveled at those "once a month/once a week moms" who cook all their meals in one day for the week or the month.

After my week of cooking for the week I would be gone, it was very clear to me that making dinner fresh every night works allot better for us. I'm glad I got a chance to try it out as I always wanted to do it.

Well, while in NY, I had an interesting experience. Every once in a while I think how nice it would be for my kids to be in a real Yeshiva with lots of other kids in their class. 

On Shabbos I went to visit an old friend whose son was having a Shabbos party at their home. I walked into her house to find about 20 eleven year old Yeshiva boys bouncing all over the place. The 2 older boys who were supposed to be in charge were somewhat dumbfounded and at a loss as to how to control these kids.

It happened to be my friends sons birthday so she brought out the birthday cake to get all the kids to come back to the table. 

While they were giving out the cake, I sat myself down at the table with all the boys and just observed what was going on. There was one boy sitting so nicely and quietly at the end of the table. He looked like a quiet kid who probably would have loved to hear a nice Shabbos story or sing some songs. But the wild boys completely over powered the party so he was left there to sit and eat his birthday cake, which he ended up getting last since he wasn't grabbing or yelling to get a piece.

I decided I wanted to speak to these kids. So I stood up while they were all eating and told them where I lived and that my son doesn't get to go to Yeshiva like they do. I told them that he learns online and at home with his mommy. The first questions they asked were, "What happens if he doesn't do his homework?" and "What are his punishments when he's 'bad'?" I told them that he doesn't get homework and he has no reason to act 'bad'. It was a very interesting eye opener for me. 

This is not to say that all boys in Yeshiva are wild. Please don't get me wrong, these boys were good kids, just a little high on candy and soda and what not. 

But it made things very clear to me about what goes on out there.

Anyhow, I am back now and in full swing--- here are some things we have done this week:

In learning about this weeks Parshah, we learned that when the Jews keep the Mitzvos and study Torah, Hashem sends lots of rain to Israel and lots of fruit and vegetables grow. There will be Peace in Israel and the animals will be good to each other. Here are some cute projects the kids did to illustrate that:

  

Here are 2 Mitzvah Trains the kids made to show some Mitzvos that we can do to get these Brachot: 

And this is just 2 Space stations/Satellites that my son made out of paper cups, bowls, pencils and cardboard. He is very into Space and had a ball making these: 

This is one of those Color-a-cookie I brought back from NY for my kiddos to enjoy: 

And that, my friends, is what is going on in our neck of the woods. 

Wishing you all a wonderful week,

Always, 

Parshas Shemini- Kosher Animals

Here's a peek at a few things we've been up to/will be doing this week for Parshas Shemini:

Here is the kids adorable Har Sinai Sefirah countdown chart that THEY made today. It was so sweet how they all orchestrated it together, having one make all the flowers, the other painted, another went to go pick some real flowers to stick on- I forgot to take a photo of the finished product, but its up on the wall and really precious, and the BEST part is that THEY did it all by themselves. Mom was just there to make sure the stapler, scissors and glitter didn't get too out of control:)

Kosher fish sorting. We took a magnifying glass to look at the fins and scales on the Kosher toy fish.

Kosher bird sorting:

Math- using sand paper numbers and little fish counters:

Animal Magnet Kosher sorting on a magnetic cookie sheet:

Learning the parts of the fish- concentrating on the fins and scales:

Now this was a really gross activity if you ask me, but my 3 year old LOVED it and spent A LOT of time with his little bug friends. The point of this activity was to remove all the bugs from the fruit and vegetables since bugs aren't Kosher (as if we'd eat them if they were!) I have quite the phobia of anything small and gross so setting this up really was not easy for me, even if all the bugs are plastic... but the little guy was in bug heaven, so here it is:

Here is just a classic Kosher/non Kosher animal sorting activity

These are some great books we are reading, and searching for all the Kosher animals. You would be shocked how many we found!

Click here for some cute worksheets on Kosher animals. Scroll down to the "Brachot" worksheets.

Just a little puzzle we did with the little ones:

These are fabulous stickers that my princess used to make a whole scenario on a farm. She left the non Kosher animals out and put them on another paper.

And just for fun...

Here is where you can get some of the things we are using:

Have a great week,

Parshas Yisro- The Luchos

Okay... I'm back with my baby wipes caps:)

This time, we made our own Luchos (tablets with the 10 Commandments)-

Here's what we did:

Took a piece of thick cardboard and covered it with this funky scrap-booking paper that the kiddos picked out.

Then glue gunned the wipe covers to the cardboard, 5 on each side:

Kiddos then decided what colors they wanted the cover of each cover should be and settled on a red and white pattern- their own unique creation.

My big guy then wrote Alef-Yud (for each commandment) on each paper and we glued them onto each cover.

Using 2 pages listing the 10 commandments from Parshas Yisro in My Parshah Reader, I made 1 copy of each. We cut out each one (one in English, one in Hebrew) and glued it inside the correct letter.

The kids really love opening and closing each one. Its great for discussions on each mitzvah. We might get more creative over the week and maybe add a picture in each one... but you can really add your own twist on this project.

And here's just a very cool thing we did that I wanted to share-

Using the tea cans from Starbucks, I covered them with different colored card stock, made a label, stuck it on and voila... some great quality storage bins that look really cute all lined up next to each other.

Just like the baby wipes, we have lots of these tea cans (we are tea drinkers in this house:) and they are so cute and so sturdy. Go us for saving the environment!

On a blog roll, so until next time~