Yom Kippur Activities for Kids

Yom Kippur is also known as the Day of Atonement in the Jewish calendar, and while that sounds pretty heavy it gives a great opportunity to teach kids about asking for forgiveness and starting each day trying to do better than we did the day before.

Fasting and religious services are an important part of the day, as well as blowing the shofar, a horn made from a ram’s horn, to mark the end of the service. Kids aren’t required to fast but many of the other traditions of Yom Kippur can be shared with kids.

Learn more about Yom Kippur with this reading and comprehension questions packet from Teacher Noire, available on Etsy. And if you’re traveling for the holiday you can print out a book of word scrambles from Sakura James to keep kids busy. (They also have word searches and other printable activities.)

One of the traditions of the day has to do with the use of a scapegoat, which in the Bible is a literal goat that was sacrificed as a way to be forgiven for sins. I love the way Bible Belt Balabusta incorporates this tradition with kids by having people write down their al chets (meaning “missed mark,” an analog for sin in Hebrew), attach them to a goat and having the goat “sent away” to another room. The way the activity is set up people can write things down privately but still share in the communal expulsion of things they could have done better.

Judaism.org has an idea for kids to make a mitzvah wheel, which gets them thinking about people they can be kinder to and good deeds they can do in the coming year. You could also just talk about what a mitzvah is and the ways you can do good things for people in your family, at school or synagogue, and in the wider community.

Mini Monets and Mommies has an easy shofar craft kids can make from a cardboard tube. Family Holiday has some Yom Kippur themed coloring pages you can use to teach kids about the holiday.

It is forbidden to wear leather shoes on Yom Kippur, so making slippers is a great craft for kids to do this time of year. Jewish Homeschool Blog has a simple idea using sticky foam that kids can decorate and wear around the house.

Also check out this collection box idea that I shared a few years ago.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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