Celebrating the holidays as a family and passing on traditions is an important part of every culture. While your students have likely grown up with traditions of their own, winter is a great time of year to broaden their worldview and explore together the history, traditions, and special meaning behind the various winter holidays celebrated around the world!

While the bulletin boards we found yesterday offered a hands-on craftivity to engage little hands in the learning process, this bulletin board we found over at WikiHow has some fun elements for creating a more informational bulletin board. What we love most? The three-dimensional elements! The pan of latkas, not only looks cool, but is a fabuous way to tie in the traditional food dish and the colorful dreidels really pop on the dark background!

Happy Hanukkah!

• Background: Dark blue bulletin board paper.
• Title: "Happy Hanukkah!" or use the the poem from the menorah craftivity {found below}!
• Border: Silver wavy trimmer.
• Decoration: 1) The Menorah. While you can create your menorah out of gold wrapping paper or aluminum foil like the original bulletin board, we found this craftivity over at LilTeacher.com and think the colorful candelabrum would make a great addition to the board!

  

  We suggest either cutting and fitting together strips of colored construction paper, pasting them onto a piece of white bulletin board paper, then drawing and cutting a candelabrum shape from the paper, or finding a black and white clip art image online to trace, paint, and cut!  Add colorful construction paper candles and yellow construction paper flames! 2) The Dreidels. Find a 3D dreidel template {like this one at Enchanted Learning} to print onto white card stock. Invite your students to decorate the dreidels with markers, stamps, etc., then cut, fold, and arrange around the bulletin board. [NOTE: You could also simply print the templates onto colored paper, cut, and assemble!] 3) The Pan of Latkas. Cut a 12" circle from gray construction paper and 1" strips of gray paper to fit around the edge of the circle, fashioning  the 'sides' of the frying pan. Add another 1" by 10" strip of paper to the 'pan' to create the handle. For the latkas, the original post suggests crushing paper towels and stapling or gluing them to the bottom of the pan. 4) The Details. As for the rest of the board, add information cards, pictures of celebrations, pictures of important historical figures, etc. to help your students learn about the holiday!