Introduction:

This activity, submitted by Chavie S. is fun for children to make during Hanukkah and to display in their home.

Materials:

• sturdy pieces of paper, poster board, etc. (to cut out a dreidel shape)
• glue
• yarn, confetti, beads, cut out wooden shapes, pom poms, etc.

Directions:

1. Draw the picture of a dreidel onto a sturdy sheet of paper, poster board etc. and cut out the shape. Cut a large square in the center of the dreidel. Give each student a pre-cut dreidel shape.
    
2. Have students decorate their dreidel frame with confetti, paper, yarn, pom poms, paint, drawings, etc.
    
3. Have students turn the dreidel frame over to apply glue to the frame. Press a photograph onto the frame so that the picture can be seen through the frame.

Chavie S. does this activity during a special Hanukkah celebration during which she invites parents to participate. She uses a Polaroid camera to take photographs of each student with his/her parent(s) and then uses that photograph to put in the frame.

A Little Something Extra:

Discussion Topic

"The Right to be Different"

Despite pressure to conform, Mattathias and his 5 sons refused to bow down to an idol and make a sacrifice to the Greek god Zeus. They were offered money, honor and threatened yet they remained loyal and ultimately killed the Greek officer who was trying to make them worship like all the rest of the people in the Greek Syrian empire. They even ran away to hide in the caves and began a revolt in order to avoid the pressure and the temptation to act like everyone else. Being a Maccabee, whether long ago or today can mean fighting for the right to be different and to be proud of those differences. Hanukkah is a good time to begin looking at how each one of us is unique, to celebrate our differences and to explore some of the difficulties that come with our right to be different - as individuals and as Jews.

• Who are we? - creating a portrait of our class together with the children, This portrait can include the physical self as well as the emotional and social selves of the children. The portrait can be created using art materials as well as stories, photographs and other materials. Parts of the portrait can be done by each child individually while other sections might be done by parents and children or groups of children together. What do we look like?, What do we like to do?, What are we good at?, What is our family like?, How does our family celebrate events?, What are special family occasions and special family traditions? What are the Jewish things we like to do? How are we different from each other? We can also explore the question of how the Maccabees were different in their time.
   
• Our Stories-Create stories from everyday situations in class which bring up the topic of being different or having a different opinion about how to do something is at the heart of the situation. These situations happen all the time in the preschool classroom. Once they are retold as a story the children can relate to the questions of fairness, the right to different opinions and the fact that there is always more than one way to solve a problem. This last point is especially important - the legitimacy of different ways of seeing, understanding and doing things. In the Hanukkah story we learn about two peoples who both think their way is the "right way". Unfortunately, the idea that both ways of being in the world could not live side by side was not a viable one at the time and the Jewish people had to fight for their right to live their beliefs. Giving small groups of children (or individual children) the same task and then looking at the different outcomes together while affirming each interpretation is another way to explore the topic.