A touch of Hanukkah

Our history chapter for the week was about the Jewish Diapora. I took this opportunity to study Hanukkah. I didn't know that much about this holiday. I knew it has something to do with a miracle of oil in the lamps lasting for a lot longer then it was supposed to. I also knew that the Menorah played a big roll and the dreidel was a toy they played with but I honestly didn't know how it all fit together. We have been reading a bunch of children's books on the subject and I have learned a lot. The kids have had a lot of fun listening to Hanukkah songs and reading about this holiday. Today we decided we would sample some traditional food eaten for this holiday.

We made Challah, braided bread. Mine was just one braid and didn't turn out quite as nice as it is supposed to look but it tasted good.
We also made Latkas. I don't usually fry much of anything at our house but I guess the oil is to remind the people of the oil that lasted longer than expected. For some reason they eat these with apple sauce. I didn't really care for the taste. They were fine just plain.
I did set the table with our blue table cloth since blue is a Hanukkah color. No menorah at our house we settled for one candle
I don't know if everything was kosher but we had grilled chicken (Maybe it should have been fried?), applesauce, and peas to go along with our bread and potato pancakes.

This afternoon while waiting for the Challah to raise we made some borax snowflakes. This had nothing to do with Hanukkah but it just sounded fun. We boiled water, poured it into a wide mouth mason jar. Stirred in a lot of borax and then dangled a pipe cleaner shaped snowflake into the solution. Left it there while we got everything else ready for dinner. After eating we checked on the snowflakes.

We pulled it out and it had lovely crystals to look at. My only question about this little project.... Why did I spend two weeks making sugar crystals earlier in the fall. This took a matter of hours and we got more crystals. Maybe I will have to dig out those sugar crystals we made and we will see what the difference is between them.

School has been really light this week so I am glad we have had a little fun studying about Hanukkah. We haven't forgotten Christmas by any means. We are still listening to tons of Christmas music and reading all sorts of Christmas stories. It is just nice to understand a little more about what others are celebrating at this time of year.

Home Depot Kids Workshop

My friend Malissa clued me into a fun workshop for the kids that Home Depot does. The first Saturday of the month they have a kids workshop and you get to make a free project. Since it was pouring rain today and Soccer was cancelled for the day we still needed something to get us out of the house and burn some energy. All that sugar from last night still hasn't totally worn off, so we headed out to go pound some nails.

The boys were in heaven. They were surrounded by big piles of wood and were each given a hammer.



Today's project was a leaf press. The kids are very excited to go out and look for leafs or flowers so that they can use their new presses. A fun easy project! I would check to see if they have similar workshops at your home depot. I think they do them at Low's as well. But we don't have a Low's around here. Next month it will be an art easel. That will certainly come in handy with my budding artists. We may have to make these workshops a habit.