Matzo Ball Soup

The dreidel/ hovering craft experiment

For some odd reason I hoped this CD + balloon hovering experiment would lead us to a new and revolutionary dreidel…It didn’t turn out so, but (there is always a but) we had a great time doing it, and still going.



You will need:



a CD, one that you don’t need any more
a balloon
a sports plastic bottle cap
glue gun
stickers
sharpies (permanent markers)
good lungs or balloon pump

How to:


Start by decorating the CD. We have used colorful dot stickers creating our own pattern.
 

Worm up the glue gun {(keep away from children) (I am half polish, therefore, I cannot hold back this comment, sorry)}
Apply glue around the edge of the cap (the end that screws to the bottle)
Immediately place cap centered onto the CD, make sure it is attached to the decorated side.


Close the cap



Blow air into the balloon
Slip the balloon onto the cap (make sure it is closed)
Place on a smooth flat surface and release the cap (just like you would before drinking)
 

Talk to your kids before letting the air out:
can they predict what is about to happen?

Variations:
try different surfaces
Different balloon sizes
Try and release the cap just a little bit
Try and release the cap all the way, letting as much air out.


Note:
If your float device/ dreidel has a hard time moving, give it a little push, (some times we need it).

Thank you my dear sister for this great activity.
Have lots of fun
tali

Our little pot of clay

Our little pot of clay is finally set aside to dry.
It was part of my 8 nights of Chanukah 8 crafty ideas post from last year; we never got to do it then, no good reason, maybe it was too many donuts that made us too   l  a  z  y.

but let me tell you, this is one relaxing project you may want to try. if you are over 21, you may just want to pour that glass of red wine for yourself and join in with your kids. Zoe got a little carried a way, after finishing her little pot of clay, she started ‘fabricating’ some menorahs for Ori and herself, her plan is to paint them after they are dry (kind of like "color me mine", only much cheaper and more fun).




I like working with this ancient material that feels so good and so right for this holiday. Please follow this link for the TUTORIAL.

tali

Star of David foil ornament

My mom has the habit of bringing at list 2 cakes when ever she comes to visit: one cake is usually the girl’s favorite and the other is Oren’s (I am insignificant at that matter…I think she takes me for granted…or that she knows I like any cake, period.). After a couple of days I am left with 2 empty disposable aluminum pans that I cant reuse and I hate seeing them go to waste.

So this is my solution, inspired from some great traditional Mexican tin work I got from my dear friend Karen. I hope you will try this at home.

^{Mexican tin art}

^{our Chanukah tin art}

You will need:

• 1 mom that bakes 2 cakes every other week or any other disposable foil pans (could be take-out containers or baking pans)
• A pen/ pencil with out the tip/ or a thick nail
• Colorful permanent markers (such as sharpies and ArtLine)
• Scissors
• Ribbon
• Hole puncher
• Newspaper
• Star of David template

How to:

• flatten the aluminum pan, using your hands and a towel. you may cut out the corners if necessary
  
  
• Draw firmly a Star of David using a dull pencil or a tip less pen. You may trace this template to do so.
• Using scissors cutout the Star of David. The edges may be a little sharp, younger kids may need some assistance.
• Place the Star of David on a thick pile of newspaper, this is key to get nice texture.
• Use your drawing tool to deboss your design. if you turn the star over to the other side you will get the pattern embossed, the image you have drawn will be raised.
• the project gets even more exiting when you deboss areas in your drawing instead of just drawing a line, similar to filling-in shapes in a coloring book. only instead of using color, you are creating rich texture of raised and indented material. 

• Use sharpie markers (equivalent to ArtLine in Europe) to add color to your star. 
• Punch a hole at the top of your star, tie a ribbon and hang somewhere special. 

 
The sharpie markers over the aluminum are vividly luminous.

variation:

Try different holiday elements such as a menorah, an oil pot, a dradle etc.

Our menorah that came from the sea

There is nothing like going to the beach on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the middle of the winter, even better when its low tide. This is defiantly the reason why we moved to California, You just can’t beat that. When we went last week there was a great display of stones piled up waiting for us to enjoy, the rest of the time we found ourselves looking for flat small stones for our menorah from the sea.

8 nights of Chanukah 8 crafty ideas

What are we doing this holiday? I think we are staying close by. Eating lots, twirling dreidel with friends, playing No Limit Texas Dreidel, reading lots of Chanukah stories (our favorite Chanukah books found here in the Book Shop). and 'make' till we can't do no more. I have compiled a list of craft activities for the 8 days of Chanukah. Some activities are things I used to do in my childhood, some I made up, and some I found while doing some Chanukah research. I hope you will enjoy them all, and please feel free to copy distribute and share with whom ever you think will enjoy this. Please write a comment, email me or call me with any question, I love to hear from you. I don’t have images to all the projects but I will update images as the holiday goes, so check back for updates.
One little suggestion before you go buy supplies, read through the list of the different activities, see what you want to do, make your ‘grocery’ list and then go shopping for supplies once only. Also, I have posted a holiday card making in growing up creative you may find worth exploring.

Have a luminous and creative holiday.

tali

1st night - finger paint menorah

2nd night - stained glass windows

3rd night - lacy candle (with ice cubes)

4th night - revealing secret notes

5th night - a little pot of clay

6th night - potato stamping

7th night - shadow theater

8th night - star of david extrusion, made of sticks

Picking out a Menorah

Growing up we never had a ‘traditional’ menorah at home. We used to improvise every Chanukah, it usually ended up being the brown Duralex glass plate as the base for the candles (Kind of like a birthday cake with no cake, if one can imagine…).
I kept up with this tradition till Zoe brought a menorah form her preschool 2 years ago. Than I became greedy…of course I liked the one that Zoe made…how could I not…but now I wanted a real menorah that will last for many years to come and ,just like magic, every time we light it we will ignite loads of family memories. After searching for a while I found the one I really liked,

_{Enamel Menorah}

of course it was too expensive for me to buy. It will have to wait another year. (Maybe that was what my mother had been saying all along while using the glass plate as our menorah).

Mean while I thought this menorah had a great concept and it was really inexpensive. i will use it as a place holder for now...

^{Menorah cork}

Here are some others I thought were not your average Shloimalech:

The 'not Schlock's Man-orah Menorah by Josh Korwin and Alyssa Zukas create the Man-orah menorahs by hand using plumbing parts! Josh and Alyssa created Not Schlock as, "a proactive response to the overall lack of tasteful, hip, un-schlocky Judaica available to the general public."

 

^{'not Schlock's Man-orah Menorah}

Shlomi Shillinger's (an Israeli designer) Cube Menorah is a reconfigurable sculpture that can be enjoyed all year long. Its modular ceramic pieces can be used as multiple candleholders anytime. Genius!

^{Cube modern Menorah}

and this one I thought was just too funny, a really great design for what seems to be   the ultimate combination of a menorah and a Christmas tree.

 

^{Happy Holidays Chanukah Menorah Tree - Green}

We are also making a menorah this year, I promise to share when it's in the making.

The dreidel - how to play and how to gift-wrap

I always thought that the dreidel game is all about “WHO SPINS THE LONGEST”. Apparently there are some other legal (approved by the rabbi) gambling games going on in Chanukah, here is one.

There are four Hebrew letters, one on each side of the dreidel
Each letter stands for a word:
Nun–Nes   Gimmel-Gadol   Hay–Hayah  Shin-Sham
This means “A GREAT MIRACLE HAPPENED THERE”.
It seems though these letters have a double meaning. They also stand for words in Yiddish that set the rules for the game. In the game these Yiddish words correspond to the outcome of each spin of the dreidel.

How to play: (2 players and more)
1. Each player is given an equal amount of tokens (chocolate gelt, pennies, buttons, etc.)
2. Before each spin of the dreidel, each player puts a set amount of gelt in the pot (kupah)
3. Each player gets a turn spinning the dreidel
4.  When the dreidel falls, the letter displayed on top determines the outcome of the player: Nun – NICHT (nothing) move on to the next player
Gimmel – GUT(good) takes all the gelt in the kupah
Hay – HALB (half) take half from the gelt in the kupah
Shin – SCHLECT (bad) add one to the kupah
5. The player looses all his gelt is out of the game, the player with the most gelt wins.

Package the game:
A great gift idea is to package the game in a canvas sack with the rules of the game printed on it. This is how:
1. Make a fabric sack or buy one. I used 5”x6”  sacks that I got online at Paper Mart.
2. Print the lovely graphic i did (i was playing graphic designer for a bit) on an iron transfer paper following package directions. (you may also write it on the sack using fabric paint or permanent markers). Open graphic template

3. Fill the bag with Approximately 20 pieces of gelt such as buttons, chocolate gelt, beans, pebbles etc. And one dreidel
4. Give away as many as you can to keep this tradition going.
Please contact me if you have any questions.

Some history:
The game began when Antiochus forbade the Jews to study Torah. Groups of boys who had memorized the entire Torah would secretly study together until they heard the footsteps of the Syrian soldiers. Then they would quickly pull out spinning tops (dreidels) and pretended to be playing games.
The dreidel is such a fun and simple game yet so much culture and history is embedded in it.

The story of Chanukah GELT, inspired by Christmas

I spoke to my friend Gili today who is in NY City for the week. She was telling me about all the magnificent window displays, especially of Bergdorf Goodman, and the ice ring at Rockefeller center. If you have ever been to New York City around this time, you can envision what Gili is talking about, and your heart should be tingling like mine. It’s as if the city has dressed up really pretty for the holidays in colors of ‘sparkle’ and ‘shiny’, and everyone is happy and smiley. “…It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” (Andy Williams). No wonder Zoe wants to celebrate Christmas (I am certain she is not the only Jewish kid who asked her mommy for a tree). Christmas is very magical, but so is Chanukah. I believe that Santa had a much better marketing strategy and a better PR person than the Maccabeem.

No, we are not having a Chanukah bush in our house… we are celebrating Chanukah with all its might and glory. We do visit friends who celebrate the holiday and enjoy their tree and decorations. We also watch the unavoidable cheesy Christmas movies with a huge bowl of popcorn and have a blast, sometime even shed tears. Luckily we don’t have to deal with cleaning the mess that the dried evergreens leave and the conscious of chopping a tree down.

I still remember how shocked I was to find out that in the US Jewish kids are accustomed to getting 8 gifts for Chanukah, one for each night. Sometimes more than one a night considering the grandparents and the aunts and uncles who send their share of gifts as well. Wow – that’s all I could think, and a feeling of envy infiltrated my heart, while calculating in my head the number of gifts that I have missed in my growing years. You see, growing up in Israel the custom is giving some GELT (which means money in Yiddish), and no gifts.
I never really knew the reason for giving money; I don’t think my grandparents did either. So I thought this is a great time to find out why. You can be certain I found a number of different reasons, but this is the one I really liked. 

The story of GELT: (the story of Chanukah)
Long ago in the land of Judea (Israel of today), ruled the Syrian king Antiochus. He was determined to force Hellenism upon the Jewish population, at the expense of their beliefs and rituals. Spiritual freedom was taken from the people of Israel. One could no longer follow his own belief out in the open. Many turned to worship the Greek gods, while some decided to stand up for their beliefs. The rebellions formed an army led by Judah Maccabee. After 3 years of fighting they finally were successful in driving the Syrians out of Israel and reclaiming the Temple in Jerusalem.
The story of GELT, like the story of Chanukah, is about freedom. Money represents freedom, the liberty to make choices, to acquire and to donate. I don’t know if you remember that far, but being a child you are often being told what to do, bound by rules and restrictions; usually hear more NO than YES. By giving GELT to your child, you have the opportunity to teach them about the freedom to make choices with their money, and the importance of channeling some material wealth toward spiritual ends.

As for the gifts, as you suspected it is influenced by the Christmas custom of giving. As for the 8 gifts…I think it came from needing to convince the kids Chanukah is just as great as Christmas, if not better.

My conclusion (after consulting with Oren over a cup of coffee):
One gift + Gelt + lots of Chanukah stories + donuts + spinning dreidels + lighting the menorah + having friends come over = another great Chanukah
I can’t wait... “…it’s the most wonderful time of the year…” (Andy Williams)

(Note: How much gelt? - one dollar a candle not including the Shamash total of 36 gelt. Some people spread it over the eight days; some give it all at once usually on the fifth night).