Chanukah Giveaway Winner!!!

And the winner of the Chanukah Giveaway is....

~~~~BRINA GONZALEZ~~~~

Congrats to you and your kiddos!

Please email me your mailing address to Jewishmontessori18 AT gmail DOT com

And wishing all of my fabulous readers a HAPPY CHANUKAH, may your Chanukah be filled with lots of love, light and many revealed miracles!

Always,

Chanukah Worksheets

Here's a great link to some Chanukah Worksheets--

Chanukah Worksheets

Chanukah Math Work Sheets

Stay tuned, winner of the Chanukah giveaway will be announced tomorrow!

Amazing Playdo Recipe and Home Library Organizing...

I found this FABULOUS Playdo recipe and knew I just HAD to share it with you to make for your tykes-

Homemade Playdo Recipe

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1 Tbsp. cooking oil

1 Tbsp. cream of tartar

1 cup water

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl

2. In a small sauce pan, mix the dough on medium heat until it turns into a ball, about 2-3 minutes. Some residue may stick to the sides of the pan, but it hardens and falls off.

3. Place the dough on a flat surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth. It will be warm.

-- To color: take amount of dough you wish to color, drop a few drops of food coloring on it and knead it with your hand until a solid color forms. I used plastic gloves to prevent my hands from getting full of food coloring. Also, as you knead it with the food coloring, it starts off with a marble effect, but keep kneading until it is solid. You can use any colors, mix colors, etc.

-- To make a scent: add a few drops of any nice essential oils, vanilla essence, cinnamon, any good smells and knead it well. You can add more if the smell isn't strong enough. I also added some glitter to ours, the kids loved it. There are lots of fun things to add to the dough, feel free to share any good ideas.

Store it in a Ziploc or Tupperware with a lid.

Here is a cute project we did, using the playdo:

note: after this project, the kids got busy rolling, shaping, braiding etc until all the colors were mixed and we had a nice big grey blob:) Its a good thing we can make more Playdo should we need new colors!

Okay, so back to the project-

While my husband is more of the scholar and Rabbi, and I am the dreamer and creative one, my oldest has shown an amazing interest in all things SCIENCE. So its a REALLY good thing we have the Internet and a bunch of great resources so any time the little guy wants to learn something new and has questions that we do not know the answers to (like, what layer of the earth is lava found--- yes, he is 5 and asked this question!) we can just google it...

So in answer to his question, using Playdo, we built a little 3D model of the earth and what the layers somewhat look like:

I know I learnt it in high school once upon a time, but Science was REALLY not my thing. I really like the kids to have a hands on experience in whatever they are learning, so this was really great.

And by the way, lava is found in the Mantle. That's the 2nd layer from the top:)

***

Now I must tell you, I am not an organized person by nature. Because my kids are home for a large part of the day, I really try to have as many organized systems as possible, just to prevent utter chaos from happening.

We are a book family. The walls of our home are lined with books- including the kids playroom. We have all types of books: Jewish books, Story books, Dr. Seuss, Baby Board Books, Educational Books and some Hebrew Books. (I'm not a fan of Disney stories, Fairy tales or Nursery Rhymes, so they can discover those on their own one day, just not in our house)

Our kids (like most kids) LOVE reading. Even my little ones, just sitting on the floor with a book on their laps, love flipping the pages to see what comes up next.

Now the problem was, at the end of everyday, we had books ALL over the floor. And when it was time to clean up, the kids would just stuff them into the nearest space on the book shelf, upside down, side ways, whatever. It was getting ridiculous, especially when they were looking for a specific book, it took forever to find.

THEN...

I came upon a post of another homeschool mom and found her amazing idea that I tweaked for our family.

Using colored dots, we color coded the books into the different subjects I listed above. This took about 2-3 days to do, and not all at once.

Each subject has a different colored dot stuck on the bottom of the book. Now when they are done with a book, they put it in the correct section, facing the correct way, how awesome is that???

So if this is helpful to any of you- enjoy!

Chanukah Activities and Giveaway!!!

A few things we've been up to lately...

Chanukah Sensory Table:

Sorting biggest to smallest:

Dreidel Paintings:

Chanukah Collages with Chanukah Foam stickers:

Building a Chanukah Menorah with Shapes, Hammer and Nails:

A "stained glass" Chanukah Menorah- you can make a dreidel like this too:

Chanukah Menorah made out of colored collage squares- glitter for the candles:

Here is a very exciting project we are working on: Continent Boxes...

Basically, each box represents one of the seven continents.

I added Israel to the mix, cos its our country and it made sense to do so.

Inside each box, you put photos, chatchkes, books, any thing that pertains to that continent.

This is a classic Montessori project, but I am giving it a Jewish twist. I am looking for photos of different types of Jews and Shuls in the different parts of the world as well as traditional Jewish recipes. My husband happens to have a huge collection of Tanya's (an incredible Jewish book on Chassidic Philosophy written by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi) that were printed all over the world. The only continent box without a Tanya that was printed there is Antarctica. We did manage to find a photo of a Jewish scientist lighting a Menorah in Antarctica, which was very cool.

Once we have filled the boxes I will take photos of what treasures we found, and if anyone has any good ideas of other Jewish things to fill them with, please share!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~Okay... now for the fun stuff~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WE'RE HAVING A CHANUKAH GIVEAWAY!!!

In this Giveaway are the following Goodies:

• an Alef Bet coloring book
• a Shabbat Activity Book with activities to do on Shabbat, and the kids can color the fun pages during the week
• an Alef Bet writing book with picture to color
• One Minute Jewish Games
• Alef Bet Rubber Stamp Collection
• Alef Bet Puzzle
• Alef Bet Flash Cards

Here's how to enter...

You can do one or all of the following... each thing you do is one entry in the raffle:

1. Leave a comment. You can leave as many comments as you wish. Every comment is a raffle entry.
2. LIKE Jewish Montessori on Facebook and let me know you did it in the comments
3. Tweet about this Giveaway and let me know you did it in the comments
4. Share this post on Facebook and let me know you did it in the comments

Winner will be announced December 20th, 1st night of Chanukah!

Have Fun and Good Luck!