Retelling the story of Hanukkah with comical results

Here is a picture of the poor puppet playing the part of King Antiochus! Luckily he survived his ordeal.

In England and Wales all schools have to have Religious Education lessons weekly (usually shortened to RE). I have since found out that this is actually quite unusual and that in many other countries there is very little if any teaching about religions in schools. Here in England we usually have between half an hour and an hour lesson weekly for RE. I actually remember RE lessons as being my favourite at school. I loved learning about other religions and how they were different and similar to my own emerging Christianity. I also remember many lessons at secondary school in particular that turned into very interesting debates with very different opinions and viewpoints represented. I feel it made me a tolerant person willing to try and see things from other people's points of view. At primary school the focus was much more on stories from different religions and cultures and thinking about the morals or ethics that these stories were meant to portray.

So that brings me to thinking about the festival our Jewish friends and colleagues are currently celebratings: Hannukah!  I've retold the story in my classroom every year for the past 4 years. I usually use videos if I can find them online or visuals to retell the story. However, last year I managed to find the most amazing puppets at EWE Educational resources. They were actually Bible puppets but I decided to use some of the puppets to retell the story of Hanukkah to my class of 10 children. Many of the children in my class had autism or ADHD as well as behaviour difficulties and sensory processing disorders which made story telling difficult sometimes as it was difficult to keep the attention of all 10 children at the same time. Anyway, I was telling the story and using the puppets to help retell the story. As I was telling the story and explaining how King Antiochus has stopped the people from worshipping God and had cancelled  their religious events one of my children got up and attacked my poor King Antiochus puppet! He shouted at the puppet that it was 'evil' and 'horrible.'

I have to say - I found this particular outburst hilarious and exciting! Here was a child who hardly ever listened to more than 1 minute of a story so engaged with the story and 'in' the story that he felt the same anger towards King Antiochus as the people of the time who rebelled. The rest of the story telling went very well and all the children were listening and excited when we got to the part about the lamp staying lit with only one day's oil for eight nights. We followed up on the lesson by making potato latkes and looking at a real Menorah. The children really enjoyed lighting a candle on it each day!