Shma Party

Sorry about the slow pace of posts- consider it a mini maternity leave. In honor of the birth of our son I am posting about something we did which might be fun for other families. There is a custom that some practice to have children say shma with the new baby the night before the brit. Typically called Vach Nacht (watch night-Ashkenazim) or Brit Yitzchak (edot Mizrach) We decided to turn this minhag into a “big sister shma party with her new baby brother” party.
This was a big success and considering that I just had a baby, not especially difficult to prepare or do, considering attendees were 4 and under.
We printed out shma coloring sheets (on recycled paper) from chinuch.org (boys and girls saying shma) and set out crayons and the sheets for children to take when they came over. We also put out cut vegetables, pretzels, cheerios and water to snack on. There were also cups of food coloring paint with q-tip paint brushes as well as carob powder paint in decorating bags. These were to decorate plain round cookies and face cookies as “shma cookies” to take home after the party.
The party lasted about 1.5 hours. At some point we asked all the children to make a circle around the baby. We asked “Can the baby say shma?” They said “No!” We asked “So who will say shma for him?” They replied, “We will!” and proceeded to say shma, very cutely. Hamalach Hagoel was also said and some children gave the baby brachot.
Afterwards we went to the table and I showed everyone how to use the food coloring “paint” to make smiley faces with hands covering one eye. It was more for the concept. Four year olds prefer to slobber cookies with decorating materials as well as eat it directly from the container. It was interesting to note that they equally enjoyed the taste of the carob powder decorating stuff, which had no sugar and the colorful paint which was chock full of sugar. The recipe to make the paint was  a variation of the icing listed here with extra water. For the carob one i replaced the sugar with carob powder, but chocolate powder could equally be used. Considering the lack of sugar the children really liked it.
For slightly older children, or if you have a little more energy, feel free to print out the graphic at the top of the post to give the children ideas or pipe chocolate hands on some of the cookies.