Hanukkah

About this resource

Learn about Hanukkah with reading, counting and sorting. This is a complete kit for one topic, built for the table where children need different amounts of support. It starts with a fact chart: Hanukkah is a festival of lights that many families celebrate for eight nights; a menorah has nine branches, eight for the nights and one for the shamash, the helper candle; a dreidel is a top with four sides; latkes are potato pancakes fried in oil; gelt is chocolate coins in gold foil. Children then match words to pictures, find the menorah that shows a night, count the night candles and all the flames, read three short passages and circle the right answer, fill in the word, draw the candles for a night, and cut and paste onto sort mats. It comes with a tracker, a class grid and a family update, so nothing has to be written from scratch.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (29 pages)

• 14 student pages in 9 page types: Fact Chart, My Menorah, Match the Word, Which Night?, Count the Candles, Read and Answer, Fill It In, Draw the Candles, and Cut and Paste
• 65 scored items on 12 pages, every answer read from the data behind the page, never typed by hand
• 3 short reading passages (What Is Hanukkah?, The Menorah, Dreidels, Latkes and Gelt) with 3 questions each
• 6 facts on the chart, each with its own picture
• 24 cut-and-paste pieces on 3 sort mats (8 pictures, 8 short sentences, 8 full sentences), each into two labeled boxes
• 2 answer keys, generated from the same data as the student pages
• 1 tracker (page, page type, items right, date) and 1 whole-class progress grid
• 1 team note (a hand-off page between team meetings) and 1 home page
• 1 filled example (an invented student), 1 phrase bank (16 observable-language starters), 1 binder cover and 6 divider tabs with a spine label to cut out
• Start Here and a how-to-read-a-page page

The Page Types, Easiest First

1. Fact Chart (starting): six picture cards (festival of lights, menorah, shamash, dreidel, latkes, gelt), six words to know, and two lines for the child to write what menorah and shamash mean.

2. My Menorah (starting): one big menorah with all eight night candles and the helper lit, three blanks (branches, night branches, the helper's name) and a box to draw a menorah of their own.

3. Match the Word, 1 page (1 dot): a word and four pictures. Circle the matching picture and write its number.

4. Which Night?, 1 page (2 dots): "Night 5" and four menorahs with different numbers of candles. Circle the one that shows that night.

5. Count the Candles, 1 page (2 dots): eight menorahs. Count the night candles, then count all the flames (the helper candle is lit every night).

6. Read and Answer, 3 pages (2 or 3 dots): a short passage and three questions, each with three lettered choices.

7. Fill It In, 2 pages (2 or 3 dots): Set A writes the word for a picture from a box of six; Set B finishes a sentence from a box of eight (three are not used).

8. Draw the Candles, 1 page (3 dots): read the night and draw that many candles with flames in an empty menorah.

9. Cut and Paste, 3 pages (1, 2 or 3 dots): a big two-box sort mat and a block of 8 pieces that touch edge to edge, so cutting is a few straight lines. Paste 1 sorts pictures into Food and Things; Paste 2 sorts short sentences into True and Not true; Paste 3 sorts full sentences into Menorah and Food and games.

Informational, Not Devotional

The facts are the ones a reference book would give. Customs are written as what many families do, because families celebrate in many ways. There are no prayers and no devotional text, and no dates (Hanukkah falls on different dates each year). The pictures are our own drawings: a menorah, a dreidel, gelt, latkes, a doughnut, a bowl of applesauce, a candle and a jar of oil.

Built For The Child Holding The Page

A big "My name" line, one short instruction, large rounded type, big answer boxes, and dots (not words or colors) to show which level a page is. Nothing on a student page is written for an adult. The drawing boxes are about two inches tall so there is room to work. The file prints clean in black and white.

No Guessing The Answer

Wherever a child picks among printed spots (which picture matches, which menorah shows the night, which lettered choice is right, the order of the pieces on the cut strip), the position of the right answer is checked so it does not sit in the same spot three times in a row.

Type In, Or Print

The name line and every answer box are type-in fields in any PDF reader: click one, type, then save. The same goes for the tracker, the class grid, the team note and the home page. This is a fillable PDF; it is not a Google Slides or PowerPoint file.

Who This Is For

Primary classrooms, self-contained and resource rooms, and any teacher adding a short, factual look at a winter festival to a center, a small group or a morning work folder. The reading is written at about a grade 2-3 level, and the teacher can read each passage aloud.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

A set of Hanukkah reading and vocabulary worksheets with the record-keeping around it. It is not a religious lesson, a timed test, a screener, a clinical tool, or a claim about any student's age or rate of progress. There is no IEP goal language or eligibility wording anywhere in the file.