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!

Best Homeschool Mom Blog Winner!

A special thanks to all of you who voted for

A Jewish Homeschool Blog!

Some Pretty Cool Activities

We have a huge tub of crayons in the kitchen that the kids use to color and draw... inside that tub are tons of broken crayons that the kids just don't use and so thanks to the many awesome ideas out there in the blogosphere, this is what we did:

First, place them in a cupcake tin, I divided them into like colors, but you can mix them, either way is fine...

Put them in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes... only after I put them in the oven did I wonder if this would be a problem in the Kosher department- but I found out that since crayons are not food and these are non-toxic, that it is fine. Feel free to ask your own Rabbi if its okay to put wax crayons in your oven.

After 10 minutes, I took them out- they were completely liquid and marbled so I carefully put the tray of crayons in the fridge to harden. After about 15-20 minutes, they were hard and I pushed them out of the molds... and VOILA!

My 4 year old daughter has claimed them as her own, she piles them on top of each other, colors with them, traces around them- yes, it was a hit and I am looking for Alef Bet molds to make our next batch of crayons with. If anyone know where I can get them, let me know!

Okay, now this next little Science project we did was absolutely awesome.

It is all about Density in Liquids.

We took 4 liquids:

Honey

Dish Soap

Water with red food coloring

Oil

We poured the honey, then the dish soap, the water then the oil and this is what we got:

Note: we did it very carefully so not to mix the dish soap and the water. After a day the water started seeping into the dish soap. Someone suggested we try rubbing alcohol on top of the oil as it is less dense then oil and would rise above it. If anyone tries it, let me know, we didn't have any in the house.

Have a good one,

Parshas Chayei Sara, Alef Bet and more...

Here's a great book to go along with this weeks Parshah, all about how kind Rivkah was at the well:

Keeping my 2 year old busy while we work... using large beads and pipe cleaners, he made necklaces and bracelets just like Rivkah received from Eliezer:

We made our own well with real water inside and a bucket the kids could use to retrieve water. They used little mentchies and animals to reenact the story or what happened at the well, they played with this for a while:

The more advanced version of Rivkah's jewelry for the bigger kids to make (smaller beads):

Some hands-on Alef Bet activities--

Creating letters using shapes, hammer and nails:

Creating letters with the Geo-board:

We used the Montessori Red Rods to create the letters of the Alef Bet:

Using the Sandpaper Hebrew letters, they traced it with their fingers then traced it in the sand:

This is Avraham's tent from last weeks Parshah, Parshas Vayeira:

A pretty awesome Science experiment we are doing- get 2 stalks of celery and slice the bottoms giving the water direct access to the veins. Place them in 2 different colors of water (using food coloring) and watch how the water goes through the veins in the stalks to the leaves. It took a few days but the kids loved checking on it every day:

And thats what we've been up to~

Wishing all a great week,

Parshas Vayeira- Bikur Cholim and Hachnosos Orchim

Here are two Mitzvah Activity Packs in connection to Parshas Vayeira- click on the TEXT to download:

My Hachnosos Orchim (welcoming guests) Activity Pack

My Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick) Activity Pack

Here are some great books and puzzles in connection to Bikur Cholim and Hachnosos Orchim:

A great a week to all~

Homeschool Blog Awards!

Ok everyone, the annual Homeschool Blog awards are up an running and I would LOVE your vote!

Its super easy, just click here, and click on the dot next to A Jewish Homeschool Blog-

Thanks for your vote!

Parshas Lech Lecha- Transportation Activity Pack

In connection to Parshas Lech Lecha and travel, here is a little Transportation Activity Pack

Click Here to download

Enjoy~

Parshas Lech Lecha- Stars and Transportation

Here are a few things we have been doing in connection to Parshas Lech Lecha:

Aside for My First Parshah Reader, we are reading A Little Boy Named Avram by Dina Rosenveld.

We printed some coloring pages from Chinuch.org and Munchkin colored them and stuck on star stickers while we were talking about how Hashem promised Avraham that his children would be as many as the stars in the sky.

Then, using Star cut-outs which I got at Walmart for $1, I cut them up to make little puzzles and stuck a magnet sticker on the back of each piece. We took all the pieces, mixed them up in a basket and the kids used a magnetic cookie pan to put the stars back together again. The nice thing about using the magnets is that the puzzle pieces stay in place once put down.

Here is a math activity using the Montessori beads. Pretty straight forward. You can make your own beads using pipe-cleaners and colored beads.

A great counting activity, stick the correct amount of Star stickers as the number written on each star. My Munchkin (3.5) LOVES stickers, so anything with stickers is an instant winner with her.

Creating a night sky with different types of star stickers, some foam, some glittery and all different sizes. She actually made a pretty awesome sky, overlapping stars, mixing colors. It was very cool:)

Simple beading with star beads.

After working with stars, we moved on to Transportation- "Lech Lecha", Avram and his wife "traveled" to Canaan. So we are learning about all things connected to modes of travel.

Cutting activity with cars using the Kumon Cutting Workbook.

Transportation Sensory Tub, using black rice we picked up from the local Health Food store in bulk. We put in some Lego street signs and Toob Cars. This was SUCH a hit with my 2 year old, he sat there for quite a while burying all the cars then trying to find them.

Then what started as a simple sorting activity, turned into this:

Taking the idea from my little one, we used the sensory box to hide all the cars, planes and boats and the older kids would search for them and once found, place them in the correct section.

Then using big blocks, cars, street signs and little people, they each designed there own roads.

Using chalk, they drew streets on black construction paper and used these transportation stickers to create a whole scene.

This was a kit we got and they made boats, trains, cars and planes.

Here is where you can get some of the products we are working with this week:

A great week to all~