Yom Ha’atzmaut / Israel's Birthday

For Yom Ha'atzmaut we invited our Grandparents/Special Persons and created a workshop focusing on the different cities of Israel. We discussed that Israel has a birthday just like us. We learned about the different cities in Israel. and we pretended to visit them. We made pretend suitcases (and packed our items) and brought along our passports. It was such a long flight, but well worth it. 

The first city we visited was Jerusalem. The children had a fun time decorating brown paper bags and stuffing them with newspaper to create our class Kotel (the Western Wall). We learned that the Kotel is a special place where Jewish people come to pray to Hashem and leave him notes full of prayers and wishes. 

Kotel 

The next stop on our trip was Eilat. We learned that people go to Eilat to relax on the beautiful beachers and to go snorkeling on the coral reef. We played a fun matching game, where we had to match the color, shape, or number to the fish on the coral reef. We also played in the sand table, where we played a game where we had to find an object that start with certain letters. 

Sand Table Instructions 

We also visited Tzfat, which a very artsy city. Here the children crafted bracelets by using beads and forming various blue and white patterns. 

Lastly, we visited a kibbutz. Here we played and orange tree number matching game and made our very own orange juice. 

We also made a Special Persons book where each child illustrated a page for their grown up and dictated their favorite thing to do with them. We also baked delicious and beautiful blue and white cupcakes in honor of Israel.