American Girls Club - Rebecca - Week 3

For the 3rd night of American Girl Club for Rebecca we celebrated Chanukah! We started out the night by making dreidels.  I printed them out HERE and then then girls colored and assembled them. Once they got them ready one of the mom's collected them in a bag to be used later in the night and gave each of the girls a candy driedel I made before hand just for fun.

Candy Dreidels made from a marshmallow, Hershey Kiss and a pretzel.  I used a little icing to hold it together.

After our driedels we made we joined together to go through the 8 nights of Chanukah.  I read a book aloud to the girls called  Pearl's Eight Days of Chanukah.  It is a story of a family going through all 8 nights of Chanukah.  Each night they incorporate different things into their celebration.  By the end of the book we had...lit candles for all 8 nights, heard the story of Chanukah and said the blessings, sang songs, spun the dreidels, eaten latkes and kugel and made our own menorahs.

Here is our table set up before we started.  Our Menorah is in the middle. (It is made from 5 candle holders I bought at Dollar Tree.) On the board I wrote the blessings to be said each night before the candles are lit (so we could all say it aloud together as the mom's lit each candle), directions for playing with the dreidels and The Dreidel Song.

After I read the story for each day and we did the activity one of the mom's lit the candle for the day.

One of the mom's and one of the girls leading us in singing The Dreidel Song.

The girls playing with their dreidels. For our gelt we used Rolos and Hershey's Kisses.  Since I was not comfortable with the whole gambling aspect of the Dreidel game we made sure that everyone ended up with the same amount of candy at the end of the night. 

Our Menorah after all the candles were lit.

The menorahs the girls made.

This is made from a large craft stick, Crayola Model Magic and birthday candles.

Here are also 3 fun videos I sent out to the mom's ahead of time to share with their daughters.

Lighting of the Candles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocEoGMOctp4

Driedel Song (Fun Jazzy Version - Scroll way down on the page.)

http://bussongs.com/songs/dreidel_dreidel_dreidel.php

Video of How to Play Driedel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rD3La8lV2w

One of the things I have really enjoyed about studying Rebecca is the reminder that without the Jewish faith we would not have the Christian faith.  Jesus was Jewish.  And as for Chanukah, Jesus would not have been born if it was not for the miracle of the Jewish people being saved. If the Greeks had succeeded in destroying the Jewish faith the Christian faith never would have come to be. So learning more about the Jewish faith has made me feel even closer to my own faith.


I hope the girls enjoyed this night as much as I did. I learned a lot and it was one of my favorite nights of AG Club!
Happy Homeschooling,

Jamin