Shavuot, which marks the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, begins at sundown on May 14. To celebrate the holiday with your kids, try one (or more!) of these ideas that are popular in our preschool classroom:
- Make harvest baskets (in either 2-D or 3-D) and draw and/or glue fruits inside the baskets to celebrate the second harvest.
- Have a baking activity and make dairy foods, like pudding, cheesecake, butter or blintzes, as it is tradition to eat dairy foods on Shavuot. (Recipe ideas here.)
- Decorate your home with paper or real flowers. This Shavuot custom reminds us that flowers were blooming on Mount Sinai when the Jewish people received the Torah.
- Make pretend Torah scrolls out of paper and paper-towel rolls.
- Make 10 Commandments tablets out of clay. Practice writing numbers and Hebrew letters on the tablets to count the number of commandments.
- Celebrate the harvest by preparing a delicious salad with fruits and vegetables. Try to incorporate foods from the seven species, which the Torah mentions grow in Israel: grapes, figs, olives, wheat, barley, dates and pomegranates.
- Play the following songs to get in the spirit (and try learning the lyrics for a sing-a-long!): “Eretz Zavat Chalav” and “Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe.”
More holiday ideas: make Shavuot green and/or host an ice cream party!
*Image used under Creative Commons license from Jill Siegrist
By Marceline Marsan and Jessica Waterman from the Yal-Day-New Day Care Center Preschool Classroom.
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