Fun Hanukkah Arts & Crafts for Kids to Celebrate the Festival of Lights

It's the time of year for family, friends, and tradition. In the Jewish community, Hanukkah (Chanukah, or Channukkah) is known as the "Festival of Lights." It is an eight-day festival celebrated in November or December, commemorating the miracle of oil that occurred in the Holy Temple during the Maccabean Revolt in the 2nd century BC. This year, it begins on December 24th and ends on January 1st. Today, it is celebrated by Jews around the world and is filled with food, family, and presents. What a wonderful opportunity to teach your children about Jewish history, engage in meaningful crafts, and even teach them a little bit of Hebrew! Here are a couple of fun, meaningful activities to do with your children this Hanukkah!

Let's start with the proper holiday greetings:

"Hanukkah Sameach,” and "Chag Sameach," mean "Happy Hanukkah." However, "Chag Sameach," is closer in meaning to "Happy Holidays."

If you really want to impress, say "Chag Urim Sameach!” (urim means “lights”, so this phrase means "Happy Lights Holiday" or "Happy Light Festival").

Now that you know, let's go!

Activity:

Why Jews Celebrate Miracles

Teach your children the story behind Hanukkah, along with the basics of driedel play, with this interesting history. The video below is an excellent animation for kids depicting the struggle of Jews to maintain their way of life during a time of persecution; explaining the miracle of oil and how driedel play helped protect Jewish families during raids.

The Chanukah Story: Why Jews Celebrate Miracles

Craft:

Driedel, Driedel, Driedel, a Driedel Picture Frame!

After learning about the history of the driedel, lead your little ones in a craft that allows them make their own foam driedel in the form of a picture frame! This easy craft, adapted from one at Activity Village, includes a personal photo and allows kids to spell out whatever message they like. It will be a precious memory for, too, for many years to come!

Materials:

• Photo
• White & blue foam sheets (for the blue foam, one with a sticky back is best)
• Precut Foam Letters (preferably sticky back) in blue
• Scissors
• Non-toxic glue
• Age appropriate decorations of choice (glitter, rhinestones, stickers)
• Ribbon or hanger (Optional)

Instructions:

1. Cut a driedel shape out of the white foam that is big enough for your photo to sit on top of without overhang. Cut a blue rectangle that fits underneath the photo. Cut a small "picture frame" out of the blue foam that will sit over the picture.
2. Glue back of photo to the blue backing. Glue or stick the top frame to the photo. Place photo and backing on the driedel cut-out, sticking it to the foam with either the sticky backing or glue.
3. Help child spell out their message with the foam letters beneath the picture. Stick letters to the foam.
4. Allow child to decorate it to their liking, then (if using glue) wait for it to dry
5. Make a small hole and thread ribbon or an ornament hanger through the hole, if desired.

Can't wait for Hanukkah to roll around? Want your little one to impress the relatives at the family meal? At Little Pim, we've got you covered with a full Hebrew immersion program geared toward your little ones. December 24th is coming soon, so contact us today!

Little Pim's Thanksgiving Coloring Page

Your little ones will love coloring in their pal, Little Pim feasting at the Thanksgiving table while you're busy cooking and entertaining. Print out this coloring page today and teach your kids how to say new words to celebrate Thanksgiving to incorporate language learning into your day. When you’re done, you’ll have a finished picture to hang on your fridge! Share your kids’ page with #littlepim on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Enjoy your turkey day!

Thanksgiving-themed Spanish Vocabulary: 

agradecido (por) — thankful (for) las gracias — thanks compartir, repartir — to share el cuerno de la abundancia, la cornucopia — cornucopia el desfile — parade la familia — family el fútbol americano — football (not soccer) el noviembre — November el otoño — autumn, fall

Thanksgiving Translations via Spanish.About.Com.

For more fun activities for kids on Thanksgiving, visit our post from last week.

4 Thanksgiving Activities Your Kids Will Love

Crafts are fun ways to get your littlest Thanksgiving guests involved in the celebration and keep them occupied while you are busy hosting and preparing the meal. Here are 4 great Thanksgiving activities for kids: 

Thankful Chain

Grab some construction paper in a variety of fall colors like orange, brown and red. Cut them into strips, and hand them out to your kids. Give the children markers, and ask them to write one thing they are thankful for on each piece of paper. Have older kids help those who are too young to write.

When the paper strips have all been written on, make a chain by linking them together and securing each with a piece of tape. Use your chain to decorate your front door, or hang it near the Thanksgiving table.

Napkin Rings

Gather some paper towel roles, and cut them into sections of about 2 inches each. Give kids construction paper, glue, Thanksgiving stickers, glitter, ribbon and any other craft supplies you like. Have the children decorate each paper towel section. Use them as napkin rings at the table.

These also make great gifts for grandparents or other family members when you are eating at someone else's house.

Paper Plate Hand Print Turkey

Give each child several pieces of construction paper in fall colors. Trace their hands, and cut them out.

Cut a paper plate in half, and ask the kids to glue their paper handprints onto the plate in a fanned out pattern. Cut out about a 2 inch diameter circle, and glue it in the middle of the plate. Use markers or googly eyes to make a turkey face on the circle. Glue on a construction paper gobble.

Leaf Rubbing Place Cards

Get a piece of card stock for each person at your table, and fold these in half so they stand up.

Gather strong, sturdy, green leaves from outside. Place the leaves under a thin piece of paper, and rub crayons over the paper on top of the leaves to create a pretty pattern. Cut the paper to fit the card stock, and glue it on top. Use a permanent marker to write the name of each guest on the card stock.

Try these 4 fun Thanksgiving craft ideas. Your kids will be proud to display their artwork as part of the holiday decor.

For more kid-friendly activities, check out our post on a multicultural Thanksgiving. If you have any tips or activities to share, please comment below. Thanks for reading and we hope you and your loved ones have a fantastic holiday season!

Don't Put the Brakes on Bilingualism this Holiday Season

It's that time of year again! The holidays are just around the corner. If you're raising a bilingual child, it also seems like an unproductive time for language learning. You're busy with orchestrating the perfect "winter wonderland" at home and carrying out all of the family traditions. Grandma's visiting and you're taking off work. Who has the time to sit down for language lessons? Even if you do have the time, who wants to do book work while Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is on? The kids are out of school for most of the month, after all! Why make them study during their break?

Hold your horses. Even during the season of cheer, your kiddos shouldn't "pause" their language learning efforts. We know that kids lose some (alright, a lot) of the progress they made during the school year over the summer. Kids lose two months worth of reading skills and computational math skills over the summer. As for that Spanish class? You can forget about it. Literally. But, what's the difference when your kids are off in December as opposed to the two month break that most kids in North America get from June to September?

Although experts at the college-level agree that it's not as significant as the "summer dump," it's still worth it to continue learning into the winter to avoid a total information brain freeze. From Thanksgiving to New Years, your child will have a lot of down-time. There are lots of simple things you can do to keep their mind engaged in language learning over the holidays.

Here are a few fun ideas that will help keep your children's' minds active this winter:

Foreign Language Journaling

Depending on the age of your child, encouraging them to keep a physical journal over the break actually helps retain and improve the skills learned in school. Inspire their creativity with response prompts in both English and their target language. To gain their interest, suggest prompts related to the season at hand. For elementary students, here's 77 prompts to inspire their winter writing.

Journaling in another language is actually a great way to advance in it. There's a well documented link between handwriting and knowledge acquisition. Some college professors ban electronic note taking for this reason. There's also the freedom to make mistakes without being made fun of; a common anxiety among those who wish to speak another language. Encourage them to practice their new language, reminding them that a journal is a safe place to express themselves without fear of having their mistakes overanalyzed.

Dual-Language Reading

According to experts, reading is the number one action students should take in order to avoid a mental deep-freeze. If they're too young to take the initiative themselves, you can read with and to them to reap the benefits. Encouraging your child to read over the holidays is one of the easiest ways to keep them engaged, as books are accessible through local libraries, create meaningful interactions with the family, and are portable for holiday travels. Getting lost in a good story is also just plain fun!

To encourage language learning, you can purchase (or borrow) dual language books, which allow your child to read a story in both languages side-by-side. Dual language books are available in many languages and improve language acquisition and vocabulary in bilingual children. There are even some available for free on Trilingual Mama's website.

It's not just beneficial for learning another language, either. According to a study done at the University of Calgary, the introduction of dual-language books into classrooms improved overall literacy skills.

Cultural Field Trips

Field trips shouldn't just be left to the school. A recent study from the University of Arkansas indicated that students learn more about a subject when exposed to it on a field trip versus the classroom. In particular, the empathy and cultural understanding of disadvantaged students was shown to improve after being taken on field trips. Since field trips offer an opportunity to expose children to different cultures, they're an excellent way to foster bilingualism. We know that language isn't just about conjugation, nor is culture all about tradition. Culture influences language and vice versa. Consider visiting a museum or other cultural exhibit with your children during the holiday season, like a local Hispanic heritage museum.

Multicultural Holiday Traditions

This time of year is an excellent one for cultural immersion, as every culture has its own holiday traditions. Attend a festival, or guide your child in an activity that relates to the traditions of another culture. If you're teaching your child Spanish, consider attending a Posada party. If they're learning Russian, participate in the New Year's tradition of Father Frost and discuss the similarities and differences between Father Frost and Santa Claus. This will get your child fired up about another culture - something that's important for success in another language.

At Little Pim, we offer amazing products that will help your young child learn a new language. Consider beating those winter woes by starting your child on one of our 12 language programs today.

Bilingual Baby: When is the Best Time to Start?

The benefits of introducing your baby to another language are well documented. In our rapidly globalizing society, knowing a second (or third) language provides an obvious edge over the competition in the job market.

But, what about its impact on childhood development? While some would suggest that over-exposure to foreign language may cause delay in speaking, this assumption is both unproven and outweighed by the benefits dual-language babies experience as they grow.

We know the many benefits, so the question soon becomes: “When do we start?”

The answer is surprising. According to an article by the Intercultural Development Research Association, it may be most beneficial to begin second language exposure before six months of age. In a study by psychologist Janet Werker, infants as young as four months of age successfully discriminated syllables spoken by adults in two different languages. Dr. Werker’s work also determined a possible decline in foreign language acquisition after 10 months of age. To give your child their best start, you must begin early.

How is this so? The answer can be found in the complex world of the human brain. Our brains react uniquely to language learning at any age, even growing when stimulated by another language. While mankind can acquire a language at mostly any stage, it is exceptionally difficult to do so outside of childhood. From infancy to age five, the brain is capable of rapid language acquisition. Even so, there are varying degrees of acquisition, even for children. After six months of age, infants begin distinguishing the differing sounds of their native tongue and others. Beyond six months, exposing your little one to a brand new language will pose a challenge.

That is not to say that teaching your two year-old French is a bad idea! It is merely to say that the earlier you begin teaching your child, the better.

Though most babies wont utter their first words before eleven months of age, they develop complex mental vocabularies through the piecing together of “sound maps.” As they gather from what they are exposed to, an infant who hasn’t been immersed in another language during this delicate stage will not piece together adequate sound maps to differentiate another language.

The reason for this is rooted in the brain at birth. Children are born with 100 billion brain cells and the branching dendrites that connect them. The locations that these cells connect are called synapses; critical components in the development of the human brain. These synapses are thought to “fire” information from one cell to another in certain patterns that lead to information becoming “hardwired” in the brain. The synapses transmit information from the external senses to the brain via these patterns, thus causing the brain to interpret them, develop, and learn from them. From birth to age three, these complex synapses cause infants to develop 700 neural connections per second.

These synapses are critical in sound mapping, and at the age of six months, the infant brain has already begun to “lock in” these new patterns and has difficulty recognizing brand new ones. This is because although your baby is born with all of the neurons they’ll ever need, that doesn’t mean that they’ll “need” all 100 billion. Infancy to the age of three is filled not only with rapid neural expansion, but also with neural “pruning;” a process in which unnecessary connections are nixed and others are strengthened.

Exactly which connections are pruned and which are cultivated is partially influenced by a child’s environment. Synapses are cultivated or pruned in order of importance to ensure the easiest, most successful outcome possible for a functioning human being. If a function is not fostered during this stage, it is likely that the neural connections associated with it will fade. For the brain to see a skill as important, you must make it important.

To put it plainly, if you only speak to your child in English, the infant brain sees no reason to retain a neural pathway regarding the little Mandarin it has heard. Babies learn about their environment at every age and are internally motivated from birth to do so. Your baby wants to learn and does so by exploring and mimicking the world around them. They’re entirely capable of building a complex knowledge of Mandarin, Arabic, or Italian. So, why not feed their mind and start now?

Kids Activities: Little Pim Halloween Coloring Pages

Happy Halloween! Celebrate this spooky holiday by printing out these free, full-size Little Pim coloring pages (click the images above to open the printable PDFs). Little Pim is all dressed up to go out trick or treating this Halloween. Share your Halloween celebrates with us by using the #LittlePim on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter! We hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween. Happy coloring!

Fall Holidays From Other Cultures to Promote Bilingualism

One of the most magical aspects of the last three months of the year is the many holidays observed around the world.

From the time of the fall equinox until the New Year begins, there is an added element of excitement and sense of the fantastic, especially when there are children around. Make the most of the holidays by expanding your child’s bilingual education to include learning about the customs, holidays and fun that are part of the culture of your child’s second language.

When learning a second language, observing traditions and understanding celebrations, helps a child’s vocabulary grow as his well as providing a connection to the culture.

Here are two celebrations that will help your bilingual child better relate to his or her adopted or first culture.

• Día de Muertos — If your child is learning Spanish talk about Día de Muertos, a Mexican Holiday that coincides with All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day.  Some traditions include personal altars called ofrendas set up in homes. Visits to the graves of loved ones are featured. Gifts of sugar skulls and marigolds are presented along with personal items that once belonged to the loved one. To read more about Día de Muertos browse this informative article from Huffington Post.
• Chongyang Festival ( 重阳节 ) — is celebrated in China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan. This holiday, which began before the Han period, is still celebrated today. Also known as the Double Ninth Festival, this celebration has many traditions you can do with your family to learn more about the culture. One tradition is climbing a steep hill or mountain to symbolically defeat evil. The festival occurs on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. It is believed that the day contains too much yang and so brings trouble. You can read about some of the traditions, myths, and ceremonies, and the reasons behind them in this article.

There are many holidays, celebrations and traditions to be explored. Take some time to browse the internet for information on these.

• A good starting place for your search is to type into the search engine: _______ Holidays. (insert: Chinese, German, Portuguese, or the country of the language your child is studying).
• Select one holiday or festival and enter that name in your search engine, e.g., Chongyang Festival, for more information about the holiday.

You will soon have a long list of holidays, traditions, and adventures to extend your child’s learning.

For more information on how Little Pim can support and contribute to your child’s bilingual education visit our website and browse our blog posts today.

Easy Ways to Introduce a New Language

You might find yourself overwhelmed by all the information and advice on how to introduce a new language to your child. There are many products out there, but your child’s best teacher is You! These tips will help you get comfortable introducing the new language:

Keep it simple One of the best ways to integrate a new language is by using it during your simple daily tasks. Babies and toddlers are constantly learning about the world around them. Using a second language during your bed or bath time routines is a perfect way to ease into your new bilingual journey.

Have the whole family join in The more you use the preferred second language, the faster your child will pick it up. Encourage others in your family, adults and older children, to use the language too. Use holiday and family dinners as a platform to keep introducing the second language.

Repeat, repeat, repeat Learning a new language is all about repetition. You might start feeling like a parrot but it will pay off! As your child gets older, they might choose to only speak in English, no worries, just make sure that you repeat back what they said in the language you are trying to introduce. Repetition in your daily life is a great tool that will have great results.

Make it fun Raising bilingual children should be fun. Play games, sing songs and embrace the silliness of it all. Keeping it fun is very important because making mistakes is a part of learning and you want your child to not feel discouraged. You can get more specific and learn traditional games and songs.

Little Pim offers great easy-to-use language learning products that you can integrate into your family life. Your child can start watching our award-winning series today! Get started on a fun, life-long journey!

Bilingualism: Benefits of Learning Arabic

arabic-for-kids

There are many articles stating the benefits of being bilingual, but not many go into the benefits of being bilingual in a certain language. If you are teaching your child another language anyway, why not choose one that will improve their future career opportunities, such as Arabic? Here are a few ways that learning Arabic will enhance your child's future. Commonality

Arabic is the national language of 20 countries and is the fifth most spoken language in the world. By teaching your child Arabic, you will be giving her the ability to communicate with over 300 million people.  The majority of native speakers are concentrated in the Middle East, but with Arabic being the language of Quran, Muslims all over the world speak the language.

High Demand

With the increasing importance of the Middle East in international affairs, there is a growing demand for speakers of Arabic. Few Westerners ever attempt to learn the language, so there is little supply to meet the demand. Those who know the language are needed in many fields including journalism, translation, education, intelligence, and government service.

Financial Incentives

Arabic has been declared a language of strategic importance. Not only will many careers offer a hiring bonus or higher salary to those who speak it, but the National Strategic Language Initiative also offers scholarships and more learning opportunities, including study abroad programs.

Culture

The Middle East has a rich and fascinating culture. Be it the food, literature, music, or history, culture is a lot more interesting to explore in its native language. Arabic-speaking countries have also made significant contributions to medicine, science, and philosophy over the centuries. Much of this learning, along with that of the Roman, Greek, and Byzantine empires, has been preserved in Arab libraries.

Intercultural Understanding

Most of your child's exposure to Arabic culture is likely to be through negative media representations or one-sided stereotypes in films. These false representations can create feelings of mistrust towards Muslims and the Arabic people. With over 3.5 million people of Arab heritage residing in the U.S and over half of them reporting experiencing racial discrimination, teaching your child about their culture can potentially minimize conflict.

What are you waiting for? Get started teaching your child Arabic today! If you have any tips or experiences teaching your little ones Arabic, please comment below.

Bonding With Your Child Through Your Native Language

Creating bonds is a very important part of raising children. It allows them to feel nurtured and loved. Sharing your native language with your child is a great bonding experience that can have a life-long impact.

Family ties

Many parents that are raising bilingual children have ties to the language through family. The technology that we have today makes it so easy to communicate with family that is far away. Your child will have the great advantage of communicating and forming bonds with the extended family. Being able to communicate not only broadens social skills, it definitely expands the family tree.

For a fun craft, build a family tree with your little ones when they are old enough to recognize names and photos of relatives. Talk about the relationships between each family member and go over relevant vocabulary in your native language, i.e. words for mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, etc.

Cultural traditions

Languages are more than just words. There is a lot of tradition within them. Through the words of your native language, your child will learn about food and traditional dishes, they will learn about music and instruments. They will hear stories that have been told through generations and pick up books of great writers. They will be able to have an understanding and participate in these traditions. The bond between you, your child and family will have stronger roots.

The gift that keeps on giving

Sharing your native language with your child really is a gift. It will not only set up great advantages when he/she is an adult venturing out in the world, but it will instill a strong sense of self and an emotional connection to others. One day, your child will be in the position to pass down all of the great treasures that are wrapped inside the words of that second language.

Need some help introducing your child to a second language? Little Pim makes it fun and easy to learn a new language with resources your child will love! Comment below if you have any questions!