This is my submission to the #custom contest. #holiday Background: I love the holidays, and many of the ideas within. I’ve found, however, that most of them are for Christmas. I celebrate Hanukkah, and with this challenge I wanted to incorporate my favorite Christmas tradition into the Holidays; Advent Calendars, while putting a unique twist on it to add Judaism. The second thing that I hoped to solve with this project was interest. I feel that Christmas, with it’s activities, promises of presents, and fun traditions, is much more engaging for children than Hanukkah’s straightforward rituals repeated eight nights straight. I wanted to add fun, spontaneity, and tradition into each night of the holiday.
Setup: You will need to print eight of the base models and one central model. Then, you will need to print eight of the main, smaller, two piece candle assemblies, and one of the larger. Once you have them assembled next to each other, as seen in the final assembly picture, you are ready for the first step. As a side note, I would suggest glueing them all together to create one cohesive model. The first step is to glue the candle outsides to the model. Glueing is not strictly necessary, but suggested, as there is no downside, and it might be the only way to get it to work. Once everything is glued, you can add the presents. Lift up the latches and place the gifts under them. I would suggest increasing the gift value as the nights go on!
Usage: Each night, your child can take one of the inner “flames” and “light” a candle. Push the candle all the way down, and turn t lock it in. As the flame pushes down, the doorway to the present gets pushed open. When the flame is all the way down, the present will be open! The locking mechanism is to ensure that the flame stays down and the door stays open.