Hazon Educational Library: Crafting + DIY
Divine Dyeing: How to harness the holiness of color through natural dyeing
This program is an interactive color exploration through natural dyeing. Participants will learn about the symbolism and holiness associated with certain colors in Judaism, specifically the blue of tekhelet that is found in Tzitzit. They will also learn how to harvest and use different parts of plants to create their own dye and take home a self-dyed bookmark.
Degel – What we stand for
Everyone has things they stand for and qualities they value. Grounding ourselves in the Biblical texts about Tribal flags the Midrash there, we will use flags as an opportunity to think about what symbols we can use to describe ourselves and what we value. Participants will learn about themselves and get to make their own flags that serve to unify what they stand for with where they came from.
Shrinking Our Waste:Solar-Powered Shrinky Dinks
This program is an interactive introduction to the environmental Jewish value of Bal Tashchit, not destroying or wasting valuable resources. Participants will have the opportunity to explore creative ways we can reduce our carbon footprint by reducing and reusing everyday materials through a solar-oven baked shrinky dink project.
Havdallah Candle Making
This program is an introduction to Havdallah and DIY candle making. Participants will learn about a Havdallah candle and leave with their own candle. Students will leave with an understanding of what renewable resources are.
Age(s): Elementary
Peace Be the Feathers
This activity allows students to get a hands-on experience with real feathers and practice using them creatively while thinking about an important Jewish and worldly symbol.
Age(s): Elementary
Turn, Turn, Turn: A Jewish Calendar Garden Mosaic
Any Jewish farm, school, community center or garden can use this document to either create a calendar garden with the community or to lead interactive educational programs that situate the holiday and season in Jewish cycles of time. This document gives an overview of the mosaic design process. It does not give detailed instructions for mosaics; seek this out elsewhere if you are not familiar with outdoor mosaics.
Bento Boxes and Jewish Food Blessings
This program offers a guided cooking workshop that integrates Jewish food practice and provides tools for families to use at home.
Age(s): Elementary
Pickle Clowns
A pickling workshop taught with the magic of clowning pedagogy!
Beyond Horseradish: Exploring Maror
This program helps us explore and expand our relationship to Maror. After learning through a text study that the definition of Maror is different and also more expansive than we might have thought, participants will get to taste and then plant a wide variety of bitter leaves that could grow in their region in time for Passover.
Ancient Garden Medicinal Herbs
This program is an introduction to the history and uses of medicinal herbs growing in the Camp Tawonga Garden. Participants will learn about how medicinal herbs connect to self-care and earth-care. Participants will learn about the healing properties of twelve medicinal herbs as well as their cultural and historic uses: Israeli, Mediterranean, Jewish and Native American. Participants will be given the opportunity to and think about what it means to connect both to their herbal heritage as well as the medicinal herbs that grow natively on this land.
Age(s): B'nai Mitzvah, Teens
Make-Your-Own-Gelt: Chocolate-making from Scratch
This program is an informational and hands-on dive into artisanal/DIY chocolate making. Participants will learn all of the steps in the process--from how cacao trees were first cultivated in ancient mesoamerica, to how to wrap their gelt in foil. Taste, touch, history, mysticism, and science are all called upon to make coherent the relationship between chocolate, ecology, and Judaism.
Shabbat, Melachot, and Challah-cover making
This lesson introduces students to traditional Jewish understandings of work and rest. They will understand that ?work? traditionally meant interacting with the environment, and the connection between melachot and shabbat. They will also create challah covers and learn about Shabbat symbols like challah and challah covers.
Age(s): B'nai Mitzvah
Etz Chaim: An Exploration
This program is meant to open up participants to Torah of the forest and the farm, to see where the materials come from and to connect to the beauty and awe of a physical Torah. In the fall on the east coast, the forest comes alive with color, as the trees turn and drop their leaves and their seeds. By exploring and examining a few of the elements that make up our physical Torah, participants will walk away with an altered view and understanding of our most central text.
Natural Sofer: Torah Art Explorah
This program is an exploration into the Jewish tradition of Torah making. Through learning the traditional process of a sofer, the participants will get a hands-on painting/calligraphy activity.
Righteous Rotting
This program is an in-depth exploration of composting- from basic biology to implementing systems on a home-scale. Participants will be guided through the Jewish spiritual significance of composting and principles of sustainability while having the opportunity to apply their learning by problem-solving in a ?compost clinic? and constructing a functional compost bin.
