Yom Kippur & Jonah

Since it is traditional to read the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur, I took this opportunity to teach my daughter the story of Jonah along with talking about Yom Kippur. Amazingly, the bubble balls are still hydrated, so we added Jonah & the Big Fish to them! She enjoyed playing with Jonah in there! In addition, I filled the "whale" with items that begin with our letter this week, E. 

 
 Also for letter E, we made adorable elephant out of our handprints, which I found here. 

 

My daughter loved putting "dot" stickers (like for pricing garage sale items) on an elephant and eggs, so we will definitely do that for other letters. You can print the "Do-A-Dot" ABC pages from www.homeschoolcreations.com by clicking here. 

I found this great lesson on Jonah here (scroll down until you see "The Lesson.") I printed that out and simplified it for my little one, and also printed and cut out the emotion faces that go with it, so as I read she had to find the correct emotion to go with the story. It was great, and held her attention so well that we did it twice during the week! For review, I also had her glue the faces onto a sheet of paper while we talked about how Jonah felt and why. 

 Since our theme for the week was "prayer," I checked out from the library the book, "Prayer for a Child" by Rachel Field.

It was cute, and my daughter loved it. I wanted to read it because I found some printables to go along with it here. Most of them were beyond a two year old, but I used the word cards, so as we read, she could point out what the little girl was praying about. She has asked to read that book again many times, so I recommend it! Also for prayer, I used a page out of the FFOZ booklet, Thank You for the Food, which has all of the blessings before meals. I cut out the pictures so she could match them up and glue them on and then we also added on some real dry food items to remember that G-d made all food, and that we are to thank Him for it. (You can use a cheerio for a "bagel" and goldfish crackers for "fish", etc.)

Because my daughter would have a hard time understanding what Yom Kippur is all about, I chose to talk about repentance (saying you're sorry to G-d), and His forgiveness (one of His attributes we are learning about.) Those themes are found in the story of Jonah. Our Torah verse for the week was Jonah 2:3 "Out of my distress (trouble), I called to Adonai, and He answered me." Lastly, we did a few worksheets on the number 5...

 ...and learned a new Hebrew word beginning with dalet: dag, which means "fish." It was a fun and meaningful week, and a great reminder of G-d's forgiveness on Yom Kippur. Now we are preparing for the rejoicing of Sukkot!