Hanukkah is a holiday full of learning opportunities and activities for kids. The Festival of Lights and its traditional objects easily lend itself to craft projects, including making a milk carton dreidel or an egg carton menorah. However, there's so much more to learn about Hanukkah than how to create a non-flammable menorah. As a teacher, creating lessons plans for Hanukkah can be time consuming, but luckily there are many lesson plans available to download on the Internet.

Define the goals and objective of your lesson, as well as the level of your students. The type of lesson plans you are looking for will vary depending on what you are intending to impart and the age of your students. Lesson plans are available for everything from crafts and coloring pages for preschoolers to ways to teach and reenact the history of Hanukkah for older students.

Visit the Hanukkah theme page at the A to Z Teacher Stuff website (see Resources below). This site has lists of lesson plans for a variety of age groups. Plans include coloring pages, recipes and decodable Hanukkah readers. Scroll three quarters of the way down the page to sort the lesson plans by grade level.

Keep in mind that since Hanukkah is a transliterated word, there are a variety of ways to spell it including "Chanukah" and "Chanukkah." The teAchnology website (see Resources below) is a website that makes use of many different spellings of the word in its listing of individual lesson plans. Members of teAchnology can also download a comprehensive Hanukkah unit in .pdf format. The unit is presented as an interactive workbook.

Read the Hanukkah lesson planning article at Education World's website (see Resources below) to get a sense of how to plan for the holiday. The article includes an extensive bibliography of children's Hanukkah books to support your lessons.

Click on whichever website you have chosen and you will note that the lesson plans are grouped according to age or grade level. While it's helpful to be able to look at plans designed for a specific level, take the time to look at all the categories as most lesson plans can be easily adapted to be more appropriate for a different age group.

Preview the plans to find a few that fit your needs. Some websites offer the option of viewing a printable version of the page which eliminates any ads and borders. Clicking on the link to view it this way will make your plans easier to read. Print or save the lesson plan.