INTRODUCTION:

This festive gathering brings together food, fun, and a dash of Jewish history as participants explore the history of Jews and potatoes—from Eastern Europe’s shtetls to today’s crispy latkes. Guests will be invited to bring their favorite potato dish/snack to share as they gather to learn about Jews and potatoes and make fun potato stamp art to give as gifts this holiday season!  

MATERIALS:

• Potato Themed Trivia  
  • Chanukkah Potato Themed Trivia (below!)
  • Paper and Pen or small white boards and white board markers (for teams to write down their answers)  
  • Optional:
    • Chanukkah Potato Themed Trivia Slideshow  
    • Screen/Laptop/TV and projector to project slideshow  
• Potato Art Making  
  • Watch this video for a quick tutorial 
  • Potatoes (sliced)  
  • Paper or T-Shirts or Tea Towels or Totes  
  • Acrylic paint or fabric paint (if stamping onto fabric) 
  • Small paint brushes  
  • Pencil  
  • Paperclips  

PROGRAM OUTLINE (60 minutes): 

• Welcome and Framing (10 minutes) 
• Potato Trivia (20 minutes) 
• Potato Print Making and Nosh (30 minutes) 

PROGRAM PREP:

• Invite/ask everyone to bring a potato-forward dish. Consider creating a spreadsheet with ideas for or specific asks for what people should bring and have them sign up to bring a specific item so you don’t end up with 20 bags of chips.

Welcome and Framing (10 minutes)

• Invite everyone to sample the various potato snacks and begin to form teams for trivia.  
• Consider forming trivia teams for guests so that new people can meet each other. Consider randomly passing out stickers or colorful beads or ribbons of specific colors to guests as they arrive and then when it’s time to form teams for trivia, have everyone with the same (sticker, beads, ribbon, etc…) find each other and team up.  

Potato Trivia (20 minutes)

• Gather all of the teams, have them each come up with a team name!  
• Write down all the team names.  
• Have one person read out the questions one by one (or project the question on the screen) giving at least a minute for each time to deliberate and write down their answer.  
• When time is up have each of the teams hold up their paper/white board at the same time.  
• Give points to each team that answers correctly. Don’t forget to tally the points!  
• The team with the most points at the end wins a potato themed prize!  

Potato Art Making (30 minutes)

This station can also be set up the entire time.  

• Set up a station with the materials listed above.  
  • Consider making a sample with written instructions or having a resident stationed with the materials to talk guests through how to make the potato stamp. Or consider having a laptop with the video linked above playing silently on loop.  
• Invite guests to enjoy the potato themed treats and visit the potato art making station to make potato stamp art prints, cards, totes, t-shirts, towels, etc…  
  • Encourage people to make something as a gift for someone else to give during Hanukkah!