BEHAALOTCHA

Menorah Shapes and Game

Exciting news for those of you who would actually like to USE the ideas that I post here but are frustrated because they are always posted only AFTER the week's Parsha...my Parsha crafts will now be available on a new website called "Challah Crumbs!" This website was recently created by a friend of mine who lives in Israel and she asked me to contribute my Parsha craft ideas. I am thrilled to do this but the only catch is that I have to get them to her a week IN ADVANCE - challenging for me since my ideas have typically been brainstormed the night before or the morning of... So now, I I will just continuously be teaching my kids the parsha for the upcoming week (they don't know the difference!) So, check out the website and you can already see NEXT week's project...amazing. You will still have to look at this blog if you want to hear my parental and educational musings and photos of my cute kids.

Parshat Behaalotcha is chock-full of good stuff but I decided to focus on the first few verses which describe the commandment for Aaron to light up the Menorah in the Mishkan. The Menorah seemed like an obvious choice for a project. I immediately started googling images of the Menorah but realized that I wouldn't be able to use any of them for the "Challah Crumbs" website because of copyright issues. So, I a proud to say that I just went ahead and designed my own in a word document using auto-shapes. I think it came out pretty darn good for someone who is not a graphic designer!

My idea was to make the Menorah using basic shapes like circles and triangles and let the girls cut out and glue these shapes onto the Menorah to fill it in.





Maya was able to do this but Avital was happy just coloring in the picture...



Then, we were ready to play the game - "Pin the flame on the Menorah!" Since we did this project on a Sunday morning, it was a family affair...