The Jewish Grandparents Network gratefully acknowledges Fred and Joyce Claar, who so generously supported the creation of this post. Every week, Shabbat provides a time to rest, relax, reflect, and recharge — a moment to take a break from the hectic swirl of daily life….

At your seder, you will likely host a diverse group of guests — family and friends, neighbors, in-laws, even last-minute visitors — who may be of different religions, races, identities, cultures, and with a wide range of Jewish backgrounds. In this guide you will find…

Are you looking for activities to make the most of your precious summertime with your even more precious grandchildren? We’ve got you covered!

Are you seeking playful ways to connect with your grandchild who lives far away?

Make Shavuot come alive with drama, crafts, and cooking activities with your grandchild.

New ways to joyfully celebrate Passover with your grandchild and family

A short, family-friendly, and authentic way to celebrate the Passover seder

Ways to boost teen grandchildren’s role in the seder

Joyful ways to celebrate Purim with your grandchild in person or at a distance.

Playful ways to celebrate Hanukkah with your grandchild in person or at a distance.

3 strategies for having significant pre- and post- B-Mitzvah conversations with your grandchild

Steps you can take to develop and enhance your own relationship with the parents of your B-Mitzvah grandchild

Combine the memory-power of objects and the ease of photography for you and your B-Mitzvah grandchild to share parts of yourselves.

How ordinary personal treasures in our closets can trigger memories and family stories to share with teen grandchildren.

Your grandchild’s becoming B-Mitzvah is the perfect time to share your love and appreciation in a Forever Letter.

Tips from a grandmother to joyfully participate as a grandchild prepares to become B-Mitzvah

Ways for teens to interview their grandparents and learn about their lives

Ways to make homework — when you’re on duty — smooth, productive, and conflict-free.

Creative and playful ways to spark kids’ curiosity about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

Great ideas for dramatic audio stories to entertain your grandchild when you are apart.

Create a maker space in your home to spark your grandchild’s imagination and creativity.

Rich Sephardic traditions can spice up your family’s holiday celebrations.

How to cultivate a love of Judaism and a strong Jewish identity in the face of rising antisemitism.

6 ways to engage your grandchild in fun and creative imaginary play.

5 tips for adding Jewish to your travel experience.

Guidance from a world-traveling grandfather and his grandkids

Traveling with our grandchildren offers so many opportunities. We introduce them to new cultures, foods, music, and beliefs.

Bring stories to life through playful drama.

How can we pass on the value of chesed — lovingkindness — to our grandchildren?

Draw universal values from the movie Encanto to prompt meaningful discussions with your grandchild.

Four rituals (or mitzvot) for observing Purim.

Practical and fun Purim activities for you and your grandchildren.

Ways to do creative — yet temporary — art with your grandchild.

Traveling with your grandchild to Israel can be the start of a lifelong connection to the land of our heritage and a trip they will always remember.

9 tips for cooking together as a family even when you live far apart.

Writing stories together is the perfect grandparent-grandchild activity — not to mention a terrific workout for a young imagination.

Collaborate with your grandchild to program real stories and games.

We all have stories to tell, especially now that we’re not young anymore.

Baking and cooking with your grandchild can teach much more than kitchen skills—it’s a way to tell stories, create memories, and build special bonds.

How to plan a trip with purpose with your teen grandchild

Here are seven ways to activate story time with your young grandchild.

Research shows that teens often trust — and confide in — their grandparents more than anyone else

There is a great gift you can give your grandchildren: the gift of quiet.

A hike, of whatever distance, allows you to discover what is around you by using all your senses.

Kids are driven by two motivating factors when choosing what to watch—who they’re watching with and how they’re feeling in the moment.

These letters — written to connect us with another human being and to deepen, heal, or uplift our relationships — are Forever Letters.

The best way to connect with teens is to dive into their world through a lens of curiosity.

Watch a dramatization of Dr. Ron Wolfson’s story about his Bubbie’s Shabbat dinner.

Thanksgivukkah is when Thanksgiving and Hanukkah coincide. Here is a 10-minute ceremony to connect the two holidays.

Customize and enrich your Thanksgiving celebrations with Jewish insights and traditions.

Here are six mindful walking practices you can follow on walks with your grandchild of any age.

Sometimes the key to taking great photographs is changing the way you think.

Every day can be a celebration with dance as part of your life.

Designating a special place in your home just for your grandchild says that you love spending time with them and want to share their interests.

Here are the blessings for lighting Hanukkah candles.

Table-top drumming is a grassroots, spontaneous Jewish artform.

Celebrations and holidays mark our lives with flashing indicators: These are the big ideas that matter to us, these are the people with whom we want to explore and experience them

Explore ways to add learning to your grandchild’s play and exercise your grandchild’s imagination. Best of all, you don’t need to be a teacher or an expert.

Shadows captivate all ages and shadow puppetry is easy and fun for grandparents and grandchildren to create and act out together.

Learn how to do your own composting — whether you live in the city or suburbs.

Join in the fun as you create silly and funny food art with your grandchildren. You can eat the result!

In this 10-minute yoga session Rabbi Mychal Copeland connects easy yoga poses to our Torah stories.

Singing lullabies to our grandchildren links the memories of our past to the joys of the moment. Remember your favorite Boomer lullabies. But don’t forget those our grandparents sang to us.

Chanukah’s simplicity is what makes it beautiful. There are so many ways to make the holiday our own. Haggadot.com can help you discover eight rituals, centered around eight themes of Chanukah.

Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers) visits with the Broadway performers of STOMP in a delightful video that will inspire lots of creative fun between grandparents and grandchildren, in person or on-screen.

One of the greatest gifts we can give our grandchildren is to write — and tell — the stories that shaped our lives.

Grandparents depend on video conferencing to chat with grandchildren. Yet grandkids can quickly lose interest if we don’t engage and entertain them.

From Michael Solomonov’s brisket to a great-grandmother’s stuffed cabbage, the Jewish Food Society has over 900 family recipes and stories from all around the world on their global family recipe archive.

Discover great books to buy at the Jewish Grandparents Network Bookshop.

Discover the rich and meaningful ways objects in your closet can help you share family stories, family history, and even world events with your grandchildren and family members.

Learn how we can be fully present with our grandchildren and make our time together more meaningful, joyful, and relaxed.

What are those blocky images on your grandchild’s computer and digital device? Erik Leitner, an education STEM and Computer Science instructional facilitator and a Global Minecraft Mentor, introduces you to the world of Minecraft and explains how grandparents and grandchildren can use this video game to create, build, and explore together.

Psychologist and expert in family life Dr. Gina Touch Mercer explores how we can elevate art to advance the emotional and cognitive wellbeing of both grandparents and grandchildren.

Our grandkids love to play Minecraft and Roblox—what keeps them engaged all those many hours? Todd Harris, a gamer and entrepreneur who has been leading video game and esports businesses for 15 years, introduces grandparents and family members to the digital gaming world of tweens and teens.

Grandparents can give children the gift of joyful, freewheeling play, where there is one essential goal: to have fun. We can introduce them to the games that kept us occupied for hours when we were children.

Have you noticed that when grandparents get together we love to share photos of our always-adorable grandchildren?

For disabled children, books featuring other disabled people — mirrors — where kids see and read about people similar to them helps them identify with the characters and can play a role in boosting self-image. These books convey the positive message that there are many children like them.

We all — including our grandchildren — experience anxiety, at different levels of intensity. Cultivating a daily simple mindfulness practice can help.

With rich flavors from pomegranate to saffron, these Tori Avey recipes with videos offer tasty turns on traditional favorites. A memorable tzimmes has never been easier, a Persian Jewish side dish is a fragrant and savory complement,

Imagine a child and caregiver playing together with blocks on the floor. The child places a block and the caregiver neatly stacks another block on top.

Want to put some Jewish flavor in grandkids’ favorite day? Halloween. It’s not just about candy. It’s also about neighborhood gatherings, carving pumpkins, school parades, and decorating outside and in with ghosts, goblins, and cobwebs.

The remarkable Israeli artist, Hanoch Piven, guides you and your family to create family portraits from objects found in and around your house. There are two rules: (1) None of the usual art project material (e.g., pipe cleaners) please! (2) Have fun!

No matter what the setting—urban, suburban, or rural—you can always find a bit of nature to enjoy. If you live close to your grandchild, take a walk—in the park or in your own backyard.

Make a beautiful sign for your door – Bezalel style! The chalutzim (early Israeli pioneers) believed that Israel should have a national art style that reflected the diversity of Jewish immigrants to the land.

The Hebrew word teshuvah is built on the Hebrew root letters that mean “returning.” Teshuvah means you get a second chance.

People from every continent come to Israel to find freedom and better lives—and because it’s the Jewish homeland. Each group brings with it different customs from the old country that form a fusion of ideas and cultures in the shared land.

Do you have keepsakes that tell the stories of different family members throughout the generations; for example, a needlepoint or an old siddur, photos, home movies, or group texts with photos and videos?

This fun recycling game explores the Jewish value of bal tashchit—do not destroy. Jewish law prohibits wasteful consumption and needless destruction.

Have you ever built a sandcastle that got washed away by a wave? How did you feel when you saw it fall? What secrets can we learn from a sandcastle?

From the wise men of Chelm to the marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the Jewish people have always been able to reflect on the Jewish experience with laughter.

A bit about our own family background: Bubbie Ida Paperny, Ron’s maternal grandmother, lived in the kitchen. She also loved in the kitchen. She loved when her four daughters helped her cook up a huge family Shabbat or holiday meal.

How can we make the Sabbath a “palace in time” for our families? Filmmaker and author Tiffany Shlain has a proposal.

Sharing your family stories links past generations with future ones. Here are four options to record and save your family stories.

We all have wonderful and meaningful family stories to tell. Susan Stone, a gifted professional storyteller, shares her secrets for bringing family stories to life.

In this brief video, Ron Wolfson, renowned author, Jewish educator, and member of the Jewish Grandparents Network Board of Directors, shares memories of his Zayde and Bubbie.

What does summer taste like? For lifestyle blogger and food historian Tori Avey, it’s that juicy bite into a perfectly grilled burger accompanied by a fragrant lemon pasta salad.

Let’s help children understand how nature provides the tools they use every day—in this case, paper.

Any activity that strengthens the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren instills the Jewish value of chaveirut. Through our interactions, we teach our grandchildren how to interact with others

There is great joy in reading to our grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and other young family members. But what books should we choose?

Do you remember reading to your children? When you were a child, do you remember an adult reading to you?

The Torah teaches, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,

Memorial Day Mitzvah Zikaron—“remembrance”— is an important part of our Jewish tradition. We remember the miracle of the oil when we celebrate Hannukah. On Passover,

Enjoy a diverse range of music on the Museum’s YouTube channel inspired by Jewish holidays, nature, works of art, social justice, and more. Gather instruments at home

Get creative together! With your grandchild, choose your own adventure from the art activities below and try them together in person or virtually.

Save those holey old socks—they’re great for making simple puppets; old gloves and mittens will also work. It doesn’t matter whether the eyes are symmetrical or the nose is missing.

Art plays an important role in Judaism. Artisans are mentioned in the Torah in relation to making beautiful textiles and ritual objects of precious stones and metals for the Tabernacle and Temple.

Micrography is a centuries-old Jewish art form using tiny written words to make decorative pictures. A highly skilled micrography artist might write the entire biblical book of Jonah in the shape of a whale or the book of Esther in the shape of a crown.

There is a compelling reason to share our family stories. In the 1990s, Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, psychologists at Emory University,

Cut strawberries with your grandchild and they are likely to alternate between placing one in the bowl and one in their mouth.

Art has the role in education of helping children become themselves instead of more like everyone else,” notes early-childhood educator and author Sydney Gurewitz Clemens.

How can grandparents and parents help our children weather life’s inevitable setbacks? It turns out that the single most important thing you can do may be the simplest of all: share your family stories.