Jewish holidays – Ready Set Sarah

This site may have been pretty inactive for a while, but I promise we’ve been busy! The girls are now 6 and 4, and during our COVID year at home I discovered we (I) really love kids activities and crafts. Monday night starts Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so today we did a little craft using symbols for the holiday.

On Rosh Hashanah we eat apples with honey to symbolize a sweet new year (and I suspect there’s some seasonal harvest influence here as the holiday comes in the fall for much of the globe). Many people also have the tradition of sending happy new year cards to loved ones. So, to celebrate the year 5782, we are making cards for our family with a twist!

What you’ll need to start: cheese grater, crayon pieces, an outline of an apple, and some wax paper.

I’ve always wanted to try melted crayon activities with the girls. I remember drawing with crayons on paper laying on hot plate (or warming dish) when I was little and it was definitely fun. So, I whipped up this template to start us off, and put the girls to work grating pieces of broken crayons.

Grated crayons in apple red, yellow and orange

Then we sprinkled the shavings on our apples and covered with wax paper (to keep the pieces from being blown away). Then we took out the old hairdryer and went to work melting the crayon pieces.

Melting the crayon shavings! Everyone wanted a turn

This method actually turned out to be more fun of a process, but not the prettiest outcome. We really did enjoy taking turns grating the crayons and holding the hairdryer, though!

Soon we realized the paper was getting hot enough to melt the crayons! This led to my favorite of the 3 apples. I just love the way the hot paper melts the crayon so smoothly and the way the colors blend as they melt together. Arielle got really into this one.