Yerushalayim Puzzle for Tisha B’av

Put Yerushalayim back together this Tisha B’av!

Searching for meaningful activities on Tisha B’av can be tough. I wanted to create a craft that would give children a sense of the day. A puzzle seemed like a great format. By putting together the pieces, they can create the whole, just as we long to do with the Beit Hamikdash.

The concept here is simple – create a picture and then cut it up and let them put it back together. I drew a very simple image of Yerushayalim, but a coloring page printed out from google works fine.  We painted it using sponges and brushes, but if paint on Tisha B’av is above your mess tolerance level, crayons, markers or whatever you want of course works just fine.

Should your kid be the type who would cry if you cut up their picture, definitely do not do this step! Creating the picture will be enough art for this kid!

May the symbolism of children putting Yerushalayim back together serve as metaphor for our redemption!

Looking for more Tisha B’av projects?
Rebuilding Yerushalayim (in paper)

Yerushalayim Puzzle

Time:
Active: 15-20 minutes
Drying: 15 minutes+ if using paint

Age: 3-7

Materials:
Paper (We used card stock so it would hold up to cutting better. Thin cardboard like a cereal box works as well.)
Sponge
Paint
Scissors

Process:
Decorate your paper with a Yerushalayim scene. Cut a sponge into squares and dip it in paint to create the impression of bricks. Try not to leave too much white space or the puzzle will be too hard to put together.

I found the sponge paint to be thicker and take longer than usual to dry, so feed the kids lunch and then come back and check on it. When it’s dry, cut it into as many pieces as is age appropriate. Be careful cutting so you have some sort of color close to the edges to match up when putting it back together.

Did you do this project? Share your pictures on our facebook page!

Torah Bag

Store your things in a Torah bag this Simchat Torah!

We have been spending Yom Tov with my parents. The rabbi of their shul gives Torah cards to any kid who wishes him a good Shabbos or Yom Tov, which is the highlight of shul for many kids. My kids amassed quite a collection over all of the holidays. On Sunday morning of Chol HaMoed Sukkot, my daughter came up with a great idea of how to store them – make a “Torah bag.” She proceeded to direct my mom to give her specific supplies and put together an amazing bag!

Since they were working with limited supplies, I put together an upgraded version to share with you. I think these are adorable and have multiple potential uses if you do not have Torah cards. Bring them to shul on Simchat Torah to collect whatever the kids get there (candy overload is one of my pet peeves but that is for a different discussion). Use them as favor bags at an upsherin. Or, as my daugher helpfully suggested, just use them for storing Shopkins.

Time:
Active: 30 minutes
Drying: 15 minutes+ if using paint or glue

Age: 2-9

Materials:
Brown paper bag
Something with which to decorate the bag – paint, markers, crayons, stickers
2 paper towel rolls
Tinfoil
Scissors
Glue or tape

Process:
Trim off approximately 2.25″ from the top of the paper bag. The allows the paper towel tubes to stick out on the top and the bottom. Decorate your bag however you want. We had crown stickers, so I used one here, along with our favorite dot paint.

Cover the paper towel tubes with tinfoil. I didn’t find it necessary to use any glue or tape, just tuck the edges in at the ends.

Glue or tape the back of the bag to the paper towel rolls. Only attach the top 2/3 of the bag. Do not glue or tape the bottom part of the bag or it will not fold flat.

Allow to dry, fill and enjoy!

Did you do this project? Share your pictures on our facebook page!

3-D Paper Hamantashen

Paper Hamantashen are almost good enough to eat!

Purim is just around the corner! We finally nailed down an idea for our mishloach manot and started buying supplies, and the kids decided on their costumes a while ago. But, I am not ready to start baking hamantashen just yet. And of course, the great filling debate. Call me a traditionalist, but I really like lekvar (prune jelly). Poppy – no thanks. Apricot and raspberry are good too, but when we use jelly, it always seems to ooze out the still-pinched corners. A friend recommended Solo pastry filling as a good alternative and I am going to scout out the store and give that a try this year. My husband’s family always used chocolate chips as fillings, but to me those end up dry because the chips don’t melt.

In order to push off the whole mess and debate, we made these fun paper hamantashen instead. If circles of dough fold to make a triangle, why not circles of paper? These are easily adaptable. We used our favorite dot paint to decorate the circles and pompoms as filling, but you could just as easily use crayons to decorate and crumpled tissue paper as fillings. Or honestly, you could go filling-free and just overlap the sides a little more.

These would adorable in mini, taped on to your Purim cards for mishloach manot!

Time:
Active: 15-20 minutes
Drying: 15 minutes+

Age: 2-7

Materials:
Paper
Something with which to decorate the paper – paint, markers, crayons, etc.
Large or small pompoms
Glue
Scissors
Clear tape

Process:
Decorate your paper in any way you want. Don’t worry about making a specific picture, jsut make it look colorful! We used dot paints but anything will work.

Draw or trace a circle on the page. We made our circle almost big enough to cover the whole page, but any size will work!

Glue a large pompom in the center of the back side of you circle. You can use just one, or group a few. We found that only a small amount shows through so one was really enough but the kids enjoyed gluing little pompoms on top of the bigger ones as well.

Fold in your corners like a real hamantashen! Use clear tape to hold the sides together.

And there you have it, a paper hamantash!

Did you do this project? Share your pictures on our facebook page!

Toilet Paper Roll Trees for Tu B’Shvat

“Plant” a tree for Tu B’Shvat!

With Tu B’Shvat just around the corner, we needed to do a tree project! We used toilet paper rolls to create a 3D tree on our page. I keep a stash of these rolls around so when an idea strikes, we aren’t stuck without materials. The kids enjoyed this one. The blue blobs all over are apparently “rain” and the red splotches are some kind of fruit.

We painted it after we glued it down, but the whole time I was debating if we should have painted the whole tube first and cut it into leaves second. If you did do it that way, the edges of the leaves wouldn’t get painted but it would be neater and possibly easier. If you try it the other way, let us know how it went!

Toilet Paper Roll Trees

Time:
Active: 15 minutes
Drying: 15 minutes+

Age: 2-7

Materials:
2 toilet paper tubes, or 1 paper towel tube
paper
paint
glue
scissors

Process:

Cut one of the tubes in half. This will be your trunk.

Fold the second tube in half and flatten, so a football shape is created. Cut thin stripes off the tube. These will be your leaves. We found kid scissors not to be strong enough to cut through the tube, so we carefully used large “grown up” scissors.

Arrange your pieces on a sheet of paper to your satisfaction. Then glue them down. We found the most effective way to glue the leaves was to pinch them together until they were essentially flat. One person held the leaf in this position while the other squeezed out a thin layer of glue. Then when you let go of the pinch position, both sides of the leaf have glue on them.

Let the glue dry for as long as you can bear to wait. 15 minutes should be enough.

Paint! Make sure to get all the sides and inside each leaf.

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