Sukkot arts and crafts: toddler-style

I read this on Kveller‘s website and thought it hilarious…

Judaism must believe in the old adage, “When it rains, it pours” — at least when it comes to the fall holidays. Just after Rosh Hashanah came and went, Yom Kippur was here ten days later.  And, like clockwork, five days later and we find ourselves at Sukkot.

The harvest festival, which [began] this Wednesday at sundown, is a week-long celebration often spent outdoors in sukkahs, or temporary dwellings. So, prepare yourselves for what just might be your kids’ favorite holiday (I mean, you get to decorate a fort!).

[Enjoy it because] pretty soon it will be Simchat Torah and Sukkot will be so last week.

(OK this one is my playdough creation, not my daughter’s, and I apologize for the lulav that is bigger even than the table.) The most popular tradition of Sukkot is building, decorating, and spending time inside the sukkah. The sukkah is a temporary, flimsy, fragile outdoor structure that serves as a powerful reminder of our vulnerability to nature and a symbol of the huts our ancestors lived in as they traveled through the desert heading towards Israel. Eating and living in a temporary structure — called a sukkah — forces you to think about the important things in life, separating you from material possessions.

Because Sukkot is also a harvest festival, it is considered an especially happy and festive time.  And since my daughter’s middle name should probably have been “arts and crafts,” we have been celebrating in fun and creative ways.  So far, we’ve done lots of painting projects, made paper chains to decorate the house, and did a ton of projects involving glue and scissors (her favorite things).  Left, you see a picture of our Q-tip painting project.  I put tempura paints in an egg carton and we used small construction paper squares to create away.  Below, you see an apple print painting and a honeycomb, symbols from Rosh Hashanah.

Above interpretation: it’s common to decorate the sukkah with fruit, so in this case we cut out grapes from fabric and glued them to paper.

For this one, we foraged in our front yard for nature objects we could glue onto a pumpkin.

For our next project, we made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies! My sweet girl ground the cloves, poured in most of the ingredients, and even left some chocolate chips to go in the recipe.  I love her little hands in these photos.

Ta da!!! Delicious.