23 Days of Holiday Crats- Day 4: Hanukkah Menorah!

Before Hanukkah is over, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk to Henrik about Hanukkah. Because we don't celebrate it, I had to brush up on what I understood about the celebration, but after a few quick reads, I was quite impressed that I remembered so much.

Then, I sat Henrik down and talked to him about Hanukkah. At first he was shocked, honestly shocked that not everyone celebrated Christmas, and he was even more surprised that Santa didn't come to every one's house. However, he loved the idea of an eight day long celebration. By the end of the conversation, Henrik said, "Mom, it's okay they don't celebrate Christmas, every one is different and they do what makes them happy." Pretty profound for a three year old, eh?

So, after our discussion, we sat down to make a Menorah.

Here's What You'll Need:

Paper Plate
9 Popsicle sticks
Heavy duty tape
Yellow construction paper
Markers or crayons
Scissors
Tin foil






Step One:
First, I cut the paper plate in half and let Henrik decorate it. We talked about how people usually use red and green to decorate for Christmas and for Hanukkah they usually use blue and white. He decided against that and went with his own thing.

Step Two:

While Henrik was coloring, I cut the tin foil into strips long enough to cover the Popsicle sticks

Step Three:

I asked Henrik to wrap the Popsicle sticks in the foil. He had to make sure and press them so that they would stay attached to the stick.

Step Four:
After all of the sticks were covered, I gave Henrik some pretty heavy duty packing tape so he could tape the sticks to the back of the paper plate. We had to be sure that we were going to make the middle stick taller than the other eight.

 

 Step Five:
Once we had all of the sticks in order, I gave Henrik the glue so he could place glue on the top of each stick so we could add a flame. While he was taping, I cut flames out of the yellow construction paper so once he had the glue in place, he could stick the flames right on top of the stick before the glue dried.

And once it dried, we had a pretty cute menorah to celebrate the last days of Hanukkah!