Happy Holidays! This month we are going to provide recommendations for websites that encourage learning through the season’s festivals and celebrations. List member Brandel in Jerusalem wrote, “Since this week (Tuesday night/Wednesday) is the beginning of the holiday of Chanukah, I wanted to suggest a few websites that you could use for ClickSchooling.” In 2007, Chanukah is celebrated on December 4-12. Chanukah has a variety of accepted spellings. We’ve used both “Chanukah” and “Hanukkah” throughout this review. Brandel provided most of the following websites, we added a few to “round out” the curriculum. Age Range: Varied (Because there are so many sites recommended for this “Chanukah Curriculum” we encourage parents, as always, to preview the sites to determine if the content is suitable for your children, whatever their
age range.
Recommended Websites:
Math
Parenthood.com – Happy Holidays: Happy Math
At this website you’ll find an article by David Schwartz, the author of “How Much Is a Million?” and the “Look Once, Look Again” series. He provides
suggestions for how to incorporate fun math activities into Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations. He mentions the popular Hanukkah game “dreidel.” You will find a free printable dreidel that you can assemble, along with game instructions here: BillyBear4Kids.
Language Arts
Education World – Hanukkah: The Festival of Lights
This website offers a complete language arts lesson plan themed around
Hanukkah. It includes a “real aloud” story, suggestions for further reading,
and a fun art activity.
Social Studies (History of Chanukah):
Brandel provided all three of the following websites that explain the history of the festival. The first website also has recipes, songs, traditions, and more.
Chabad.org
Wikipedia.org
JewishMag.com
Science
The science of cooking and fire are natural extensions of the Festival of
Lights. Explore these websites:
Lesson Plan for Cooking Latkes
How Stuff Works: Fire
Thinkquest: What is Fire?
Virtual Field Trip
City of David: Virtual Tour
At this website you can take a virtual, multi-media tour of the City of
David. When you get to the site you’ll see a map (turn on your speakers for
accompanying music and narration). Click on any point on the map and a new
page opens with beautiful photographs, videos, panoramas, aerial zooms, and
interesting informative text. Brandel wrote,
“The City of David is the
archeological site of the city of Jerusalem as founded by King David c. 2100
BCE. It is south of today’s Old City of Jerusalem, which wandered northward
over the centuries. Chanukah celebrates the rededication of the Temple in
Jerusalem.”
Electives
Make A Bees-Wax Candle
Brandel wrote,
“This is good for all ages because it doesn’t involve melting
wax. There are also links at the end for making other kinds of candles.”
You
will need to purchase sheets of beeswax and wicking for this activity. You
can purchase these supplies at craft stores. Here’s a site that includes
pictures of the process of
making simple beeswax candles.
