Lesson Plans and Activities for Yom Hashoah

Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is next week. Are you planning a program?    Many schools and community organizations create programs to observe the gravity of the Holocaust and to educate and create awareness among future generations. Creating compelling programming for schools can pose a challenge, especially for children in younger grades who have not yet learned about the magnitude of the Holocaust. Children's picture books can be important tools for teaching about the Holocaust. Our books give children a first glimpse at history through unique lenses--modern cave exploration, collecting paper clips, a journey into space, and even from through perspective of a neighborhood cat.    We know teachers are busy. We've done the work for you. Kar-Ben has several free guides for teachers. Free and downloadable, these eSource guides provide pre- and post-reading questions, plus suggestions for activities that can be scaled for age appropriateness.    All of our book selections are available as eBooks, too. Using a projector or SmartBoard, an entire class, grade or school can experience these powerful books together.    Benno and the Night of Broken Glass    A neighborhood cat observes the changes in German and Jewish families in Berlin during the period leading up to Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. This cat's-eye view introduces the Holocaust to children in a gentle way that can open discussion of this period.        Buy the eBook    Buy the print book   Download free eSource            Keeping the Promise   Follow the incredible journey of a small Torah scroll from a Dutch rabbi to a Bar Mitzvah boy during the Holocaust and finally to Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who died on space shuttle Columbia.    Buy the eBook   Buy the print book   Download free eSource            The Secret of Priest's Grotto     According to legend, a group of Jewish families survived the Holocaust by hiding out for months in the 77 miles of caves in Ukraine known as Priest's Grotto. Cavers Taylor and Nicola chronicle their trip to explore the caves and uncover the story of the survivors. Buy the eBook  Buy the print book  Download free eSource       Six Million Paper Clips At a middle school in a small, all white, all Protestant town in Tennessee, a special after-school class was started to teach the kids about the Holocaust, and the importance of tolerance. The students had a hard time imagining what six million was (the number of Jews the Nazis killed), so they decided to collect six million paperclips, a symbol used by the Norwegians to show solidarity with their Jewish neighbors during World War II.      Buy the eBook  Buy the print book  Download free eSource     Planning a program or looking for new ideas? Share with others on our Facebook page.