The Plan for Friday

For a VERY small homeschool Chanukah party… (if you’re coming, don’t read this and you’ll think everything is just spontaneously wonderful!)

Sing:

• Some Chanukah songs.  I’m going to cheat and use songs off a song sheet the kids brought home from their shul party on Sunday…
• Some Shabbos songs… possibly; I’ll see how we’re doing for time and decide  how much of the Shabbos routine to do.

Read:

• The Invisible Book, because it’s cute and Jewish and my kids like it
• Harvest of Light, because it’s got trees and Israel and great text and photos; how awesome is that?

Video:

• Elmo’s World – Chanukah episode… blurry, low-resolution video, but highly entertaining.  When I watch videos like this, I get happy at first, and then sad.  Happy because it’s so well-done, and Jewishly authentic and everything… and sad because, well, why Chanukah?  Why not Rosh Hashanah???  Because of Xmas, of course.  I didn’t even expose my older kids to most of what’s out there for Chanukah.  They loved the holiday anyway, and knew everything there was to know about it, but I didn’t feel a need to fill their lives with the excellent books and resources available for this yom tov because it’s so out of proportion.

Eat:

• Make latkes, from a mix!  One of the other mamas told me I “have to” do it from scratch.  But no… that’s what I’m doing for my family party tomorrow.  So for the kids, it’s mix latkes – fast, fun, easy.  They can mix it up themselves, and hopefully someone bigger will do the frying!
• Challah, probably a frozen lenchner, like I used to do for weekly Shabbos parties when we were having them here.

Crafts:

• EASY:  This torn-paper mosaic menorah craft – easy, especially if you skip the fancy “tracing the lines” option and just have the kids “build” their menorah right on the PDF printout they supply.
• MEDIUM:  Hot-wax crayon “stained-glass” painting – like these ones we did last year, but I have a new hot tray (thanks to Value Village) that makes doing these super-easy and even a little bit safe.
• MEDIUM:  Roll-your-own shamash!  About six months ago, maybe more, I found a stack of those flat beeswax make-your-own candle sheets at Value Village; it was 99 cents for a 2-sheet package, so I bought all the packages they had.  Naomi and I made a bunch today.  They’re a bit chunky to fit in most menorahs, but they look nice and there’s lots of extra wax strips to decorate the finished candles with.

    

Holding it up to the light so you can see the glow – kind of.

 

Here’s what they look like after “washing” with black poster paint.  I think they look nice enough either way.

So great – we’re ready!  Bring it on!  Oh, yeah… first, latkes and sufganiyot for the family party at my mother’s tomorrow, then tidy the house, THEN bring it on…