Rosh Hashanah Activities for Families

As the summer draws to an end, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah beckons us. Here are some lovely Rosh Hashanah Activities for Families to take part in and involve children – from preschoolers through to elementary school kids in the rituals and celebrations.

What is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

Rosh Hashanah is an important day in the Jewish calendar, it is the Jewish New Year and celebrates God’s creation of the world! It is a time for reflection and a time for Jewish families to look back at the past year and prepare for the new one. It is a serious time of year, but also a celebration.

This Jewish festival in 2024 is in October and is, held on the first day of Tishri and lasts two days. It starts at sunset on Wednesday 2 October 2024. The traditions begin with the blasts from a shofar (a ram’s horn trumpet like instrument) and is followed by 10 days of penitence.

It ends with Yom Kippur. In 2024 Yom Kippur is on evening of Firday 11 Oct 2024.

Common Rosh Hashanah Traditions

• Blowing of the shofar
• Visiting an apple orchard and going apple picking and eating honey (symbolising the sweetness of the new year)
• Eat pomegranates – the many seeds represents the hopes for many merits in the new year
• Challah baking – a traditional round challah bread – it is round to represent the full circle of year that goes round
• Send Shana Tova Cards (wishing people a good, sweet new year)
• Perform a Tashlich ritual – tossing pebbles or bread into flowing water, symbolising the casting off of sins and promising improvements in the coming year
• Tikkun Olam – preforming acts of kindness and repairing the world one good deed at a time
• Kapparot or Kapparah – this when our sins are transferred to a chicken on the eve of Yom Kippur
• Read Books and Sing Songs About Rosh Hashanah

Baking your favourite apple and honey recipes, is a great way to engage children in Rosh Hashanah. Definitely a great way to make sure you have a sweet new year! But you can also make some lovely apple and bee crafts with them too.

We have a lovely collection of crafts to sahre with you today, that are suitable for preschoolers, and older kids too. Just pick the ones they enjoy too!

Shofar Craft

I shared this wonderful Shofar Craft many moons ago as part of our Musical Instruments Craft collection. And felt it really needed to be included here again! Learn how on Hearing Shofar.

Rosh Hashanah – Suitable Apple Craft Ideas

Make some lovely apple suncatchers, with paper, coffee filters and our free apple template! This is a wonderful opportunity to explore coloring mixing around apple and autumn coloours. So cute! Grab the free apple template today!

Another favourite are these adorable little Yarn Wrapped Apples!

No collection of Rosh Hashanah crafts and activities would be complete without some apple printing! A wonderful way to wrap gifts for the Jewish New Year and get the kids involved! Of course you can use apple printing in lots of different ways. Simple paper wreaths (we made a Halloween Pumpkin One here, but you get the idea), a lovely greeting card, decorate a tote bag (and will with honey jar gifts) would be lovely too!

Air Dry Clay Projects are another big favourite of ours on Red Ted Art.. and one of our earliest creations – the Apple Pinch Pots are PERFECT for Rosh Hashanah.

If you are thinking gifts, then these apple gift boxes made from recycled plastic bottles are also super fun and a great way to wrap a small present!

Rosh Hashanah – Cute Bee activities

Send Shana Tova Cards – Wish your friends a family a good year with an adorable little Bee Card to make. These are easy cardds – all you need is a yellow card folded in half, some black paper and any paper scraps for additional details. Our little bee card was originally made as a Valentine’s Day Card, but I think it would be lovely for Rosh Hashashana too!

We do love a greeting card or two here on Red Ted Art and we especially love all things “pop up”. Pop Up Cards make for simple STEAM Projects to engage the children.. so why not make a lovely pop up honey bee card for your family whilst creating and adorable little bee. You could replace the little paper flowers in this design, with some honeycomb drawings.

Our bee love continues with this (currently free) 3d Bee Coloring Page. A super simple way to make a lovely bee decoration and celebrate with kids and preschoolers. Grab your printable, pens and crayons and get making. Lovely for practicing scissor handling skills too!

Another popular little bee craft in our collection is this lovely honeybee hand puppet. Hand puppets are easy to make and fun to decorate. Here we used yellow and white paper, some pink paper scraps and a black pen! Easy peasy!

When my kids where younger, we did a whole Handprint ABC.. our handprint B craft was indeed a BEE! So cute! And of course a lovely keepsake too. Especially if you turn these into Rosh Hashanah Greeting Cards too!

Capturing Parenthood, has a lovely bubble wrap honeycomb craft to make too! So sweet! All you need is paper, some bubble wrap and yellow paint… so cute.

Tikkun Olam Activities for Kids

Here are some simple acts of kindness you can do with children.

• Collect for the local food bank and volunteer to help out
• Make Shana Tova cards for relatives, but also old people’s homes and visit these to keep the lonely company
• Similarly you can bake cookies and sweet treats to take to vulnerable individuals or donate to a local fire station or nurse’s station
• Bake and craft and have a small sale to raise money for charities
• Plan to plant flowers in community areas come spring time
• Go litter picking in your local community

Chicken Kaparah

You can also add a chicken craft on the eve Yom Kippur – the chicken craft symbolises the transfer of sins to a fowl – and your atonement. We have many chicken crafts you can take a look at! But if I had to pick out a couple how about:

A simple tangram chicken – practice paper folding skills.

Simple toilet paper roll chickens.

I hope these are enough resources to get you started for now! I do have lots more Apple Crafts and Bee Crafts you can browse here: