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With the Jewish festival of Hanukkah coming up in December, we caught up with mum and founder of Karen Cinnamon, to find out some of her favourite activities to mark the holiday with young children.

Hanukkah - the eight-day 'Festival of Lights' celebrated by Jews around the world each winter - has always been my children’s favourite Jewish holiday.

Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem after its ruin by the Syrian Greeks in 164 BCE - and especially the miracle by which a jar of oil found in the temple, that should only have been enough to rekindle the Temple’s Menorah (candelabra) for a single day, continued to burn for eight.

As my girls have grown, my husband and I have always looked to make it fun and easy for them to participate in traditional Hanukkah celebrations in age-appropriate ways. All of the activities outlined here are ones we did together when they were under 5.

These activities allow you to make symbolic connections about the themes of the holiday, like light and miracles, and are designed to encourage your kids to ask questions about Hanukkah traditions.

While we loved doing these activities at home as a family, we love celebrating with others and connecting with our broader Jewish community at Hanukkah. We also love inviting non-Jewish friends and neighbours over to learn about our traditions. Many of these activities would easily lend themselves to a group gathering or children’s Hanukkah party.

1. Make a DIY Handprint Hanukkiah Card

One of the most meaningful parts of any holiday is connecting with loved ones - and sending handmade cards is the perfect way to do just that. Making these handprint Hanukkiah cards - showing a version of the traditional 9-branched Hanukkah candelabra - is so easy, and kids will be so proud of the results.

1. Fold some thick white paper in half to make a card.
2. Help your child paint the palms of their hands blue (they will LOVE this part!).
3. Have your child carefully place each hand onto the thick paper to form a Hanukkiah shape with the two thumbs in the middle pressed together, representing the shamash (the central candle used to light the others).
4. Do a thorough hand washing before turning the paper upside down to add thumbprint flames. Have your child dip their thumb in yellow paint and press it on the top of each candle.
5. Once the paint dries, write your loving holiday message inside!

Speech and language therapist Janet Cooper suggests that you talk through shapes and colours as you make the images together: “Emphasise key words like ‘flame’, ‘candle’, and ‘Hanukkiah’ so your child learns to match the words you are saying to what they are creating.”

2. Decorate sufganiyot with fun toppings

During Hanukkah, it’s customary to eat foods fried in oil, to symbolise the miracle of the flask of oil that burned for eight days in the Hanukkah story. One of the most popular holiday delicacies is sufganiyot, pillowy doughnuts that are traditionally filled with jam (though they don’t have to be - you’ll find sufganiyot filled with chocolate, caramel, cream, or nothing at all). They are eaten in Israel and all over the world as a tasty commemoration.

Whether you opt to make your own sufganiyot from scratch, or buy them ready made from a bakery, decorating doughnuts is fun to do at home on your own - and it’s also a great activity for a kids’ Hanukkah party!

1. You can make or buy sufganiyot. We tend to buy them from our local bakery, and then have fun making toppings.
2. Ice or glaze the sufganiyot with vanilla or chocolate icing.
3. Then have fun with toppings! You could use crushed sweets, chopped strawberries, or mini marshmallows.

Janet says: “Try giving choices to encourage your child to use new words e.g. ‘do you want sprinkles or strawberries?’. Hold them out as you name them to encourage your child to say the word. If this is easy for them, try ‘adding a word e.g. ‘do you want a big strawberry or a little strawberry?’ to encourage them to form longer sentences.

3. Read Hanukkah stories

Reading aloud together is such a meaningful activity to do with children all year round, and during Hanukkah we love reading holiday-themed books as a family. We read at least one Hanukkah book every night of the holiday, and these days there’s a wide selection of titles to choose from.

Janet says “Sharing stories together helps build shared attention and listening skills. Stories are a great way of introducing new words and sentences.”

4. Listen to the 'Sevivon' song and spin like a dreidel!

Turn on some upbeat Hanukkah music and dance up a storm! My kids love the classic Hebrew Hanukkah song 'Sevivon' (which is the Hebrew word for dreidel, the four-sided spinning top that is customary to play with on Hanukkah) - not least because it gives them the chance to spin around like a dreidel!

Janet says “Dancing to music is great to develop early listening skills – build up anticipation for the music starting with ‘ready, steady, go’, use key words like ‘spin/stop’. You might want to turn this into a game of ‘musical statues’- when the music starts spin around, when it stops stand still like a statue.”

5. Make easy potato latkes

Potato latkes (latke is Yiddish for “pancake”) are one of the most popular traditional foods - and for good reason! On Hanukkah, it is traditional to eat potato latkes fried in oil - both to celebrate the Hanukkah miracle, and because they’re absolutely delicious.

Latkes are traditionally served with apple sauce and / or sour cream, but they are perfectly tasty with nothing at all!

• Check out this ���˿��� Food latke recipe.• Want to hide additional veg in your latke? Try this recipe with grated root vegetables.

6. Make your own Hanukkiah

This is probably my girls’ all-time favourite Hanukkah activity. Lighting candles each night is so central to the essence of the holiday, and kids feel such pride in having their very own Hanukkiah (Hanukkah candelabra) - even more so when it’s one they’ve crafted themselves! This version - made with a simple flour, salt, and water base - comes together so easily - yet the finished product is totally usable.

1. Mix one cup of flour and half a cup of salt together in a medium bowl, then add half a cup of water and stir everything together to combine.
2. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
3. When the dough is fully kneaded, make it into a flat long shape (or any shape you want!) to represent your Hanukkiah base.
4. Press a candle into your base shape, wiggle it, then remove it; you’ll be left with a candle-shaped hole.
5. Repeat this eight more times, so that you have nine candle-shaped holes in total (you might want to do something special for your shamash, like build up a little base to raise it up above the other candles).
6. Bake the Hanukkiah in the oven at 120C for 3 hours, or simply leave the Hanukkiah out overnight to dry.
7. When the Hanukkiah is fully dried, paint it however you like with non-toxic paint.
8. Line the holders with foil before lighting.

Janet says “Encourage your child to help you measure the ingredients - use words like ‘tip/pour/more’. “When kneading the dough use words like ‘press’, ‘push’ and ‘squash’ to model new describing words to your little one. Talk about each step as it happens so that your child learns to match the words to what you are doing.”

7. Make Hanukkah decorations

We love decorating our home with Hanukkah crafts made by the kids. This colourful dreidel garland is an easy project to make with little ones - and you might be surprised how much you’ll enjoy trying your hand at painting some dreidels of your own, too!

1. Cut some dreidel shapes out of cardboard (teach your kids the idea of making a template and then tracing around that template in order to produce multiples of the same shape).
2. Have fun painting the dreidel shapes.
3. Once the dreidels are dry, lay out a length of string or ribbon as long as you’d like your garland to be. Take two dreidels, painted sides facing out, and sandwich them around the string so that it passes through the dreidels’ handles. Glue or tape the two pieces together, above the string. Use a clothes peg to hold the two pieces of paper together until they dry.
4. Repeat as many times as you need to complete the garland.
5. Remove the clothes pegs and enjoy your beautiful dreidel garland.

Janet says: “Use this craft activity to talk to your child about what you are doing and what will happen next- talk about the size, shape and use the word ‘dreidel’ as you paste them onto the garland. If your child is old enough count along the garland to see how many you have made together.”

8. Have a dreidel contest!

Dreidel is a traditional Hanukkah game played with a four-sided spinning top. Each side of the top has a letter of the Hebrew alphabet on it, and together they stand for the first letters of each word in the phrase 'Nes gadol haya sham', meaning 'A great miracle happened there'.

Dreidel is a simple game to master, and it’s lots of fun to play with young children - my girls love playing (especially when they’re competing to win a pot of chocolate gelt, coin-shaped chocolates traditional for the holiday).

• Not sure how to play dreidel?

If you want something quicker and simpler, you can see who can spin the dreidel the longest.

Janet says: “For little ones you may wish to just encourage turn taking for the spinning- an early skill necessary for conversations later on. Use words like ‘stop’ and ‘go’ as the top spins or stops.”

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