Hanukkah Fairies (abit late)

I was talking to a friend and realized I'd never blogged about our Hanukkah Fairies (I planned to right after Hanukkah but it slipped my mind). So I'm going to go ahead and do so now. . . In December, a parenting forum I am was talking about Elf Magic. I thought it was a fun idea but I told myself I was NOT going to take that on this year along with everything else we had going on. But then, someone pointed out that they also had Hanukkah Elves on the site. And that got my wheels turning (see how I justify things to break my own rules . . . LOL). Since it was our first year celebrating Hanukkah, it would be kind of fun to introduce this as a fun, silly, part of Hanukkah. BUT they were sold out of the girl Hanukkah elf, and their elves were abit out of my price range anyway. So I started hunting online for a blue elf of somesort that WAS in my price range (and available). . . I didn't come up with much, but my search on etsy.com did bring up several blue fairies! I remembered from when we did a waldorf preschool curriculum with the big girls, that fairies are pretty easy to make and so I started modifying things . . . coming up with ideas that would work for Hanukkah, and made 3 blue "Hanukkah Fairies".

My PLAN was, the night before the first day of Hanukkah I'd set them all up, but then I got dates confused and thought Hanukkah started a day later than it did, so all of a sudden it was the first day of Hanukkah and I hadn't set things up the night before. So that day before we left to run errands I told the big girls to take Little Bit out to the car while I got the last things together and then once they were out in the car, I very quickly set up the fairies by our menorah, so they'd be waiting for us when we got home from errands. I got home & realized I'd forgotten to take a picture, so I literally got my phone ready and snapped the picture as I walked by so the girls wouldn't notice. All things considered, the picture didn't come out too bad LOL. I set up the fairies on/around the menorah along with their "introductory note" tied with a blue ribbon, and a little tiny jar of blue glitter (magic fairy dust). The note said they are the Hanukkah Fairies and they love to visit families during Hanukkah and learn more about Hanukkah along with the family. Also that at night the girls were to leave them a snack of fairy cookies and milk, and sprinkle them with the magic fairy dust, so the fairies could "come alive" during the night.

After the girls went to bed each night I set up the fairies to be "caught" doing something the next morning. I didn't get pictures of all of them, but here is some of their fun anyway.  The first night I left some miniature dreidels and the wrappers from some chocolate coins next to the fairies' milk "bowl". And then the fairies were all tangled up in yarn and some knitting needles with a note saying they were trying to knit themselves sleeping bags but hadn't had much luck. So that day the girls made them sleeping bags.

Another night, they were scattered abit. One was reading a library book (Hanukkah at Valley Forge, very cool book!) on the bench.

The second fairy was in the dining room on the table, reading a new book the fairies brought us, Alexandra's Scroll.

And the final fairy (MiniMe's) took them awhile to find. She was climbing on our bookcases, looking for a book to read, hee hee.

Since Hanukkah and Christmas overlapped this year, on Christmas morning the girls found the fairies visiting Baby Jesus in our nativity set.

One of my favorites, was their snowball fight! They used the tree blocks (that live in the lower drawer) to build steps up to the drawer of regular wood blocks and then set up their "forts" out of blocks. The "snowballs" are Gobstoppers, there were "snowball" ones available at Christmas time this year, that were white, green, and red. So I just pulled out the white ones for the snowball fight. Cotton balls or mini marshmallows would also work.

Another "new book day", they were all sitting on Little Bit's rocking chair reading the Hanukkah section (of course) of Walk With Y'Shua Through the Jewish Year, which we continue to enjoy as we move through this new year, learning about the various Jewish Holidays.

 And another favorite, their star-gazing camp-out. The fairies brought their sleeping bags (Sassy knitted the white one, MiniMe made a red felt one for her fairy, and Little Bit used the blanket from a small doll she already had) to a windowsill (that actually looks outside, they "lived" on a windowsill, but that window looks out on the (covered) porch, so no stars to be seen from that window), and had some (new) constellation cards to help identify the stars and were roasting marshmallows (using straight pins) over a tealight candle.

There were a couple other nights that I didn't get pictures of. And then the morning after the last night of Hanukkah the fairies were gone but had left a craft to do, the "magic fairy dust" (to save for when we come back), and a note saying they'd had a lovely time and might be back during the year to celebrate some of the other holidays.

I plan to bring them back every once in awhile, not necessarily every holiday, to keep things fun. 

As with "Santa", we've never tried to make our children think any of it is "real" but, with the knowledge that it's all in fun, they still think it's great fun to get into the fun of it all. And this definitely fell into that category. They were well aware that the fairies don't "really" come to life (and incidentally, one of my reasons for doing the "magic fairy dust" was to give myself a way to make sure the GIRLS found all the fairies each evening and had them in one place where it woudl be quick and easy for me to grab them and set up the "adventure" after the girls were in bed. As it was, they didn't carry the fairies around much, but from reading about people doing the elves, I knew that some children, like to play with their elf during the day and I could see Little Bit, especially wanting to do that, so this took care of that possibility :) 

We had alot of fun with it, and the girls LOVED it! I was usually still upstairs (having my Bible time, or getting dressed) when they would come down as soon as they got up each morning to find their fairies. It was so fun to hear them giggling about it :)