Birkat Chaverim Blog

I came up with this idea a long time ago, but I never got around to posting about it. I thought it was appropriate  around Shavuot given the Matan Torah connection. The idea here was to make Mitzvah cards for my daughter based on mitzvot she already does and can recognize. I took pictures that we already had that depicted a variety of mitzvot and used the Moo printing service to make variable business cards. On the back of the cards I asked which mitzvah … and the front of each card shows a different mitzvah. She likes that she knows the people in the pictures and I like that there is more than one answer to the question and provides an opportunity for discussion.

This picture is an attempt to show what we did while at the same time, hiding the identity of the people in the photos. Hope its useful!

In honor of Parshat Yitro here is a tutorial of how to make a great Mitzvah baby book with photos of the different pages. I did not make it- it was made by one of the girls in my class. She wanted to make something for her new nephew and we came up with this idea. We looked at lots of different childrens books. She wanted to do something for now rather than when he was older. I suggested black on white since its easier for younger children to see, and I had been saving the plastics from wipes packages to use as the crinkle inside the baby book. Continue reading »

I have been talking with my daughter about mitzvot (loosely translated as good deeds or commandments) alot lately. Because of the holiday season, we have spoken about about the shofar, the symbolic foods, prayer, charity, teshuvah among other holiday related mitzvot. We have also been talking in general about the mitzvot that she has performed.
I have been collecting them so that we can put together a mitzvah book. I don’t exactly know what it will look like yet, but I bought an inexpensive photo album and put blue paper in the front and back covers. We also did some acting where she pretended to be asleep and wake up (for Modeh Ani).
I found a very nice extensive mitzvah curriculum kit by “Al P. Darco” on chinuch.org, which is great and has many activities, sheets, and discussion points but for the most part is overkill for my toddler daughter for the moment.
The curriculum has given me some ideas of what i can do with her and I will most likely incorporate some of the work sheets over the year as we work on this project.
For the moment I sort of want to divide her actions into mitzvah themes. She knows that I am collecting the mitzvot that she does. I would like to include pictures of her and of her friends and family in the book. I think I will later make seperate books about the holidays and maybe keep positive and negative commandments in different books. For the moment we will start small with hachnasat orchim (welcoming guests), blessings over food, bikur cholim (visiting the sick), and the like.
We are also talking about mitzvot through the use of books such as My First Book of Mitzvos and Clifford’s Good Deeds. I would be interested in learning about other useful books or ideas for this topic. Please leave a comment or email me privately.