All houses consist of walls, a roof, doors and windows: What’s special about your house? What makes it your home? You may want to discuss special objects and items found in your home, or the things you do there together.
How about making a house out of blankets, cardboard boxes, sticks and clothespins? And what else would you need? Decide on a location and workplan, gather the necessary items and accessories, and off you go!
Take turns announcing a topic and having all the other players try to work together to find a suitable item. For instance, when “red” is announced, all players must search the house for a red item. In the next round, another player might call out “big”, “small”, “cute”, “old”, “multicolored”, “annoying” or “wheel”, sending the other players to look for an item matching their announced topic.
Following this book, you may want to embark on searches together with your parents, grandparents, or other relatives: What have you found? Were you surprised? Do you enjoy searching and finding?
A game for both seekers and finders.
Scan the QR code
Print out, cut out and fold according to the instructions.
Have you searched? Have you found? Would you like to play again?
This book contains both colorful and black and white illustrations. Can you figure out when the illustrations are in black and white, and when they are multicolored?
A game of “what’s missing?” Place several items in a row and look closely.
Take turns hiding one of the items while the rest of your family members have their eyes closed. Once it has been removed and hidden, the other players can open their eyes and start searching – Which item is now missing? Where was it hidden?
I’m similar to a frog but smaller. I can be found in Israel, mostly on trees, eating insects and laying eggs in the water. I’m a protected species and therefore cannot be kept in a jar, only in nature.
How many rooms does your house have? And what do you do in each one? You may want to look around and think: What do we really need, and what could we forego? You could discuss your own home, or imaginary ones. You parents could tell your children about the house in which you lived when you were their age: What are the differences and similarities between your childhood home and the current one?
You can be builders too! You can build a house of Legos, cardboard boxes, pillows, or any other material. How about decorating the structure you’ve built, and asking your parents to help you write the name of the street it’s on. And who would you want to invite over to the house you’ve built?
You may enjoy looking at the illustrations and discovering the other houses that appear in them: Who is building a house? And who is carrying one on their back?
Look at the final illustration at the end of the book, where the main character is living in a single room: Which items does it contain? Would you have removed any of them, and brought in others in their stead? Which items found in your home would you have added to the room depicted in the illustration? You could take turns and have each family member pick an item in the illustration and decide whether or not they would leave it in the illustrated room, and if not, which item from your own home they would have placed there instead.
You may like to read the story together, look closely at the illustrations, and pay attention to all the little details they provide. You may enjoy finding the father and dog who are accompanying the little boy on every page. Did you find any of the illustrations amusing? Did you guess where the little boy was headed?
Just around the corner from Grandma’s house, the little boy starts counting to ten. You may enjoy searching for the digits the illustrator hid among the pages. Did you notice a match between the number of items in the illustration and the number the boy says? Can you count how many pigtails the little girl has? Or how many birds she feeds? And how many cats are being sold?
In the illustration depicting grandma’s house, what do we see as the door opens? What and who are waiting for the little boy? You could ask your child what they think the little boy will be doing while at his grandmother’s house. What would he eat? What and who would he play with? You may want to use puppets to act out the encounter between the boy and his grandmother, and add another page or two to the story.
Perhaps you would enjoy going for a walk outside your own home and taking a fresh look around: what does your own front door look like? And the handle? Do you also have a road behind your door? Go outside, stand still for a minute and listen. Can you hear the cars going past? Birds tweet, or cats meow? What do you smell? Who do you see? You could also play a guessing game, taking turns to describe a sight or sound encountered on the way, while the other tries to guess what it is.
On the final page of the book is a heart-shaped map of the route from the little boy’s house to his grandmother’s. Perhaps you would also enjoy drawing such a map, be it heart-shaped or otherwise, of the way from your house to kindergarten.
Sometimes we cannot walk to our grandmother’s house, to a close relative or much-loved friend, because they live too far away. How, then, do we keep in touch with them? You may want to think together of ways of keeping in touch – telephone calls, sending photos or videos, letters and greeting cards.
How to Build a House 
I Like to Look For… 
One Hundred Rooms 
Behind the Door 
קְרִיאָה
סִרְטוֹנִים
יְצִירָה
מִשְׂחָק
הַעֲשָׁרָה
שִׂיחָה
קִשּׁוּר
חֵקֶר
הַשְׁרָאָה
כְּלָלִי
