This week and last we’ve been busy preparing and learning about the upcoming Jewish Festival of Chanukah through art, drama, music and of course food!

We practised drawing and crossing the mid-line through drawing and painting a Chanukiah for a classroom wall display. Crossing the body’s mid-line is the ability to reach across the middle of the body with the arms and legs. This allows children to cross over their body to perform a task on the opposite side of their body (e.g. being able to draw a horizontal line across a page without having to switch hands in the middle, sitting cross-legged on the floor). We often practice crossing the mid-line during sport or through dancing with scarves and holding them in the right hand and touching our left knee, or holding them in our left hands and touching our right shoulders etc. Crossing the body’s mid-line is an important developmental skill needed for many everyday tasks such as writing, reaching towards your foot to put on a shoe and sock with both hands and hitting a ball with a bat. We drew our Chanukiah then used masking tape to cover the lines, covered our page in metallic paint and one dry peeled off the tape to reveal a beautiful outline

Using clay we designed and shaped our own Chanukiah. Some of us chose to make a rectangle others made a square, oval, round or arch shape. It was beautiful to observe how far the children have come this year using their own creativity and initiative to form, decorate and paint their Chanukiot. The children also made a Shamash (helper) candle to use on the first night of Chanukah to light their candles. We also learned how to write the words ‘Happy Chanukah’ or ‘Chag Chanukah Sameach‘ in Hebrew on a Chanukah card.

Inbal has also kept us well fed by baking sufganiyot, donuts and levivot, potato latkes with us. DELISH!

Rivka Ash

Kindergarten Teacher