Family Activity List
INDIVIDUAL
Learn a new language: Try to learn 10 new words in a language you don’t already know.
- Duolingo Kids app - teaches French and Spanish.
- 30 easy Mandarin Chinese songs
- PJ Library page with many videos for learning Hebrew.
- Frog that jumps - intermediate
- Boat - easy
- Animal envelopes - intermediate
- Dog - easy
- Ask your parents for some household items that you can use to make music (tupperware drums, water glass xylophone, etc).
- Try it yourself - how to make music with water at home.
- Try it yourself - directions to play Mary Had a Little Lamb.
- Watch a master glass harpist performance.
HANDS ON
35 Hanukkah Activities for Toddlers
7 Easy Hands on Hanukkah Activities for Kids
18 Festive Hanukkah Crafts and Recipes for Kids
Baketivities: Use an old family recipe or find a new one online to create something tasty
Create hand puppets with old socks and put on a puppet show.
Try to draw your own comic strip.
Make a bird feeder: Roll a pinecone in peanut butter and covering git with birdseed.
DIY Lava lamp
Make your own slime
DIY Play-Doh
7 Easy Hands on Hanukkah Activities for Kids
18 Festive Hanukkah Crafts and Recipes for Kids
Baketivities: Use an old family recipe or find a new one online to create something tasty
- Hot Chocolate Bombs:
Ingredients: You will need: chocolate, hot cocoa powder, molds (shape of your choice; silicon molds work best), and hot chocolate fixings of your choice.
Directions: - Melt chocolate: put chocolate chips in bowl and melt in microwave with 30 second intervals stirring in between.
- Molding the chocolate: place a spoonful of melted chocolate into mold cavity, smooth out over entire mold.
- Allow chocolate to set (2-3 hours) Can speed up process in fridge.
- Once hardened press chocolate out of molds.
- Add a small amount of instant cocoa powder into half of the spheres, then you can add marshmallows, sprinkles, etc. if you like.
- Dip one at a time the edges of half of the spheres without filling onto a warmed pan on the stove to slightly melt the edges. To work as glue.
- Once melted enough, place onto the other half to combine.
- Allow them to set.
- Decorate them how you like.
- Enjoy in a mug with warm water or milk to melt the chocolate and release the cocoa powder.
- Make your own ice cream out of snow
- Decorate cookies
- Make snowmen and other fun creatures out of marshmallows and pretzel sticks.
- How to build a paper airplane - beginner
- How to build five more paper airplanes - beginner plus
Create hand puppets with old socks and put on a puppet show.
Try to draw your own comic strip.
Make a bird feeder: Roll a pinecone in peanut butter and covering git with birdseed.
- Cookie Cutter Bird Seed Feeders
- Homemade Bird Feeders with things you’ll find at home.
DIY Lava lamp
Make your own slime
DIY Play-Doh
OUTDOOR
Build a snowman
Build an igloo
Go sledding
Create an obstacle course in your yard (and the neighbors?): Take turns timing each person and then try to beat your personal best.
Go for a walk: There are SO many things to do on a walk.
Play “I Spy”
Go on a Listening Walk: Stop every block or every 2 minutes, close your eyes and try to identify all the sounds.
Scavenger hunt: There are many ways to do this - pick one and switch it up next time.
Build an igloo
Go sledding
Create an obstacle course in your yard (and the neighbors?): Take turns timing each person and then try to beat your personal best.
Go for a walk: There are SO many things to do on a walk.
Play “I Spy”
Go on a Listening Walk: Stop every block or every 2 minutes, close your eyes and try to identify all the sounds.
Scavenger hunt: There are many ways to do this - pick one and switch it up next time.
- Create a checklist for kids to bring with them or print one of these:
- Download a teenage scavenger hunt here.
- Download a winter scavenger hunt here.
- Color hunt: Find something red, something orange, etc.
- Number hunt: find 1 of something, find 2 of a different thing, etc.
- Use an online program like RiddleMe - get a monthly or yearly subscription and it will create a succession of scavenger hunt clues with your help, leading participants from location to location.
FAMILY
Games with playing cards:
Playdoh gallery: Give every participant a hunk of playdoh - relatively the same size. Take turns being the “curator.” The curator will decide what will be shown in the gallery and ask all the artist to use their playdoh to build a _____. (Examples: plant, person, piece of furniture, fruit, animal, etc). The curator gets to decide how long the group should take to create. At the end of each round, each artist presents their playdoh work of art and gives it a name.
Passover in winter: Instead of the afikomen, take turns hiding some other object (the snow duck in this bag would work great!) around the house. Work together to make up the “house rules.”
What’s Missing:
Supplies: 10 - 25 random small(ish) items like game pieces, kitchen utensils, coins, small figurines/toys, legos, etc;
Directions: Choose number of items to use based on children’s ages - the more you use the more challenging this will be. Select one person per round. Lay all items out in front of person; Have them close their eyes or leave the room (they cannot see what happens next); When person is not looking, the rest of people choose one thing to remove from the grouping and take it off the ground/table and hide it; The “it” person opens their eyes/returns to room and has to figure out which item is missing from the group; When the correct item(s) is selected, replace it and repeat for next person.
- Family Solitaire directions
- Golf game directions
- Parents - think of a card game you played as a kid and teach it to your kids.
- Creative Contributions - each person contributes one word and story teller must make a story using all the words
- Once upon a time… (this is a good game to do when you’re waiting around like at a restaurant or in a long line) - Each person, in order, adds a sentence trying to include many descriptive words. The first person starts “Once upon a time…” The second person continues however they’d like (maybe “there was a family of ugly trolls living near an elementary school.”) The third person continues and so on. Adults playing usually decide a great place to stop the story and start another.
Playdoh gallery: Give every participant a hunk of playdoh - relatively the same size. Take turns being the “curator.” The curator will decide what will be shown in the gallery and ask all the artist to use their playdoh to build a _____. (Examples: plant, person, piece of furniture, fruit, animal, etc). The curator gets to decide how long the group should take to create. At the end of each round, each artist presents their playdoh work of art and gives it a name.
Passover in winter: Instead of the afikomen, take turns hiding some other object (the snow duck in this bag would work great!) around the house. Work together to make up the “house rules.”
What’s Missing:
Supplies: 10 - 25 random small(ish) items like game pieces, kitchen utensils, coins, small figurines/toys, legos, etc;
Directions: Choose number of items to use based on children’s ages - the more you use the more challenging this will be. Select one person per round. Lay all items out in front of person; Have them close their eyes or leave the room (they cannot see what happens next); When person is not looking, the rest of people choose one thing to remove from the grouping and take it off the ground/table and hide it; The “it” person opens their eyes/returns to room and has to figure out which item is missing from the group; When the correct item(s) is selected, replace it and repeat for next person.
TZEDAKAH PROJECTS
- Find an elderly or any neighbor and shovel their sidewalks/stairs.
- Go through a bin of toys and find some to donate.
- Do something kind for each person in your family.
- Talk with your family and make up your own project of giving. Consider neighbors, family, elders, animals, what else?
CONNECT
Many things are more fun when sharing it with someone else.
- Choose a project included or an activity from this list and share it on video call with a grandparent, aunt/uncle or friend.
- Take a photo and tag @adathjeshurun on Instagram.
- Play Simon Says with some friends or family on zoom.
PARTICIPATE IN THE ABOUNDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHILDREN AT ADATH