Make your Jewish High Holiday experience accessible and meaningful for everyone in your family or classroom! Browse and download free High Holiday resources for children and teens with disabilities and diverse learning needs, prepared by Gateways’ experienced special education teachers.
High Holiday Blessings
Illustrating each word of the blessing with a symbol makes it more accessible and understandable for pre-readers and those with disabilities and diverse learning needs. Use these downloadable blessing printouts to learn a blessing’s meaning, follow along, and recite the blessing.
The blessings are written out here in three ways: large print Hebrew text, an English transliteration accompanied by Picture Communication Symbols®, and a simple English translation.
Build Your Own High Holiday Social Story
Customize your very own High Holiday social story by printing out sections that are of interest and assembling them into a single book or a little library of short stories. You may also want to add in some of our general going-to-temple social stories.
High Holiday Activities
High Holiday Services Bingo
Staying engaged during High Holiday services might be even more difficult for children when services are online. Help them to stay focused with these fun High Holiday bingo cards! Whenever they hear a word on their boards, they can cross it off or cover it with a pre-cut square of paper.
High Holiday Crafts
Write Your Rosh Hashanah Messages
Writing Rosh Hashanah cards can be an excellent opportunity for children to practice communicating with their friends and family. Children who are pre-readers, non-verbal, or have physical disabilities are empowered to compose a holiday message with the help of the Tobii Dynavox Picture Communication Symbols®.
Pomanders for Yom Kippur
This sweet-smelling High Holiday craft is also a wonderful fine motor activity! In the past, people made pomanders, also known as clove apples, to bring to synagogue on Yom Kippur, as the fragrance of the apple and cloves helped ease hunger and revive people who were feeling faint.
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