My mother is teaching young kids at Hebrew School (I think around 4-5, but not sure) and it's her first time teaching at a Hebrew School. Do you know of any good resources for projects and activities she could do with students that age, particularly art projects, that won't cost a lot of money?
Oh my goodness! That sounds like a lot of fun! The first time I was a teacher’s asst it was around that age group and there are so many great activities. In the classroom I helped in, we had “stations” the kids were free to move between with different stations, which is a great set-up depending on class-size and supervision resources.
My first recommendation is going to be coloring pages actually. I know it sounds boring, but a lot of kids that age love to color. There are loads of biblical coloring pages out there and the handy thing is that for a coloring page it doesn’t much matter whether your Jonah and the whale is Christian or Jewish in origin.
My next recommendation is going to not be crafts but reusable things. Blocks are great for teaching so many biblical stories. I’ve heard of doing both Tower of Babel and Jericho, not to mention that they make a great “station” year-round. With some sharpie or paint, blocks can also become an aleph-bet teaching tool. Costumes can also be great for acting out stories. I haven’t done much more with that age group than let them play dress-up, but when I worked with middle schoolers we had them act out stories, etc. and they enjoyed it way more than they wanted to admit.
In terms of other crafts, I’d check out Bible Belt Balabusta. One of her High Holiday activities is actually qued to post on here sometime in the next couple weeks.
If anyone else on here has any good activities, feel free to add onto this!
