Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Y's Channukah Party

One thing that has been hard to navigate with Y is all the holidays coming up on the calendar. His teacher has been very supportive and for Halloween, she did most of the teaching about Halloween when he was out in therapy or in the afternoons when he goes to the Chabad preschool. He stayed home the day of the Halloween parade. Thanksgiving wasn't much of an issue but now we were getting to the Christmas/Channukah season.
His teacher again agreed to teach about Christmas when he is not in class. For the holiday party we will be making gingerbread houses which are not really religiously significant. And she asked me to come into class to teach about Channukah. So this past Tuesday, M and I went to visit Y's class.
We read "Sammy Spider's First Channukah" and I told the kids the Channuka story. We then decorated little dreidel picture frames and played a quick round of dreidel. Lastly we tried some of the latkes and dounts that I had brought along. The kids weren''t so impressed with the latkes but definitely enjoyed the donuts. Typical- the sugar does it.
It was a cute little party and all the other  non-Jewish kids were really into it as well. In an ideal world, Y would be in a Jewish school but I guess for now we will make do with what we have. I am greatful that his teacher is so accomodating and interested in working with us.
Another thing about the holiday season  is holiday gifts for all the teachers and therapists. So I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday and rang up quite a bill buying giftcards for all the people who play important roles in my kids' lives. While it does add up, it's only once a year and I figure it is a good investment to show appreciation and create good will.
Do you do holiday gifts? What do you usually give to teachers, therapists, doormen, etc?

2 comments:

  1. That is really amazing on the teacher's part-- and I'm glad you got a chance to "share"...
    it's always a bit of a challenge to find a nice gift-- yes, on our end too all the teachers, assistants, paras, therapists ETC add up. I find that attaching a nice meaningful note with the gift is a deeply appreciated gesture. As a special education teacher myself, I do get quite an assortment of gifts-- and the best ones are 1- nice notes; 2- gift cards to "regular" places like barnes and noble, target, etc.

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  2. We send to the shul's preschool. There's a parents group that collects donations from all the parents, compiles them and gives a monetary/gift card to each group's teachers. So rather than getting small individual gifts, they get one lump gift from the entire class. I think I like it better that way....

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