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Acknowledgement Liz Hodgman

Hanukkah  - December

This Jewish festival is celebrated for eight days with the symbolic lighting each day of another candle on a Menorah (a nine branch candelabrum) representing the days the oil lasted until more oil could be found to rededicate the temple.

Hanukkah is a joyful family festival. Gifts are exchanged, parties are given, children play games, and latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (doughnuts) are served.

The dreidel has four sides, each bearing a Hebrew letter - nun, gimel, hey, and shin - the initials of “Ness Gadol Haya Sham” meaning “a great miracle took place there”.

In fact, the origin of this game of luck goes back to ancient India. The Hebrew letters engraved on the four sides of the dreidel later came to stand for the conditions of the game in German-Yiddish (a dialect spoken by the majority of Jews in Europe and Russia):

Why not celebrate the festival and involve the children in some simple cooking activities and the making of dreidels. Make candle holders from salt dough and light an extra one each day of the festival.

Many childminders now link their activities to a theme. The following website has an excellent selection of calendars providing dates and useful background information on National Awareness days/weeks, festivals in the UK, Religious Festivals and the Christian Church along with unusual and strange events in the UK.

Welcome to a page full of fun and ideas to keep the children (and you!) entertained for hours.  Arts, crafts and cooking activities are a great way of helping the children to become creative but they also cover lots of other areas of the Foundation Stage curriculum and Birth to three matters framework. For example when using scissors, demonstrate to the children how to carry and pass them safely, sharing them, counting how many pairs there are and discuss why some have different coloured handles (left and right handed pairs).

This is very much your page and we would really like to hear what activities you do with your minded children so we can share them with other Childminders and parents visiting the site.
Any activity, craft, cookery recipe etc that is featured on our website will earn the sender a
FREE copy of the BCMA Contact Book.

Your ideas can be emailed to us  info@bromleycma.org.uk or posted to
PO BOX 125, West Wickham Kent BR4 9WU

Please include your contact details so we can let you know if we are going to use your ideas on the site and send your book to you.

CRAYONS

We could learn a lot from crayons

Some are sharp
Some are pretty
Some are dull
Some have weird names
And all are different colours
but they still have to learn to live
                                    in the same box

GOOP

For another sensory experience why not get the children to make goop  (curious cornflour!)
 

Here’s a mixture that can change from liquid to solid at a moment’s notice!
 

You will need:

Cornflour

Water

A bowl

A tablespoon

Some newspaper to work on
 

What to do

Put 4 level tablespoons of cornflour into a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of water, and stir to mix well. You may need to adjust the mixture after trying the experiment. Did you notice anything strange happen when you were stirring? Now slowly put your finger into the mixture, and slowly move it around. The mixture should feel quite thin, like cream. Now take your finger out, and try to stab it quickly into the mixture. Try to stir the mixture quickly with your finger. What do you feel? It should feel quite hard, almost solid.
 

(NOTE: If the mixture was runny whatever you did, add some more cornflour. If it was solid whatever you did, add a little more water.)
 

Here are some other things you can try:

1. Rub your finger quickly across the surface of the mixture. It will feel quite hard, and you may even see some cracks in the surface.

2. Put some of the mixture in your hand and roll it into a ball. As long as you keep rolling, it stays solid, but as soon as you stop, it will turn into a liquid again.
 

What other experiments can you think of?
 

What’s going on?

Nobody is quite sure!
The reason may be that the water gets between the cornflour grains and helps them to flow past each other. When you push the mixture hard, you squeeze the water from between the grains, and they jam solidly against each other.

Eight little candles in a row,
Waiting to join the holiday glow.

The first night we light candle number one.
Hanukkah time has now begun.

The second night we light candles one and two.
Hanukkah's here--there's lots to do.

The third night we light up to three.
Hanukkah's here---there's lots to see.

The fourth night we light all up to four,
Each now a part of the Hanukkah lore.

The fifth night we light all up to five,
Helping our Hanukkah come alive.

The sixth night we light all up to six.
Happy candles---happy wicks.

The seventh night we light all up to seven.
The glow of each candle reaches to heaven.

The eighth night we light all up to eight.
Hanukkah's here----let's celebrate

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/
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