Dave & Mary Alper JCC, Lisa Ann Watson Children's Museum presents: From Home to Home: Jewish Immigration to America

Presented from January 3 – April 3, 2016

From Home to Home: Jewish Immigration to America is for every family of every culture. Parents, children and grandchildren are sure to love this amazing exhibit, on loan from the Jewish Museum of Florida. From Home to Home will inspire visitors of all ages and backgrounds to learn more about their own family origins. Fun-filled and educationally rich, it will serve as a valuable tool for encouraging discussions at home and in classrooms of how we are all more alike than different, to help dispel stereotyping and bigotry and foster mutual appreciation.      

    Because Florida is a state of immigrants with more than 155 ethnic groups represented in local schools, nearly everyone's family, in some generation, has experienced moving to a new country.  From Home to Home: Jewish  Immigration to America is specially designed for children ages 6 to 12 and allows them and their families to experience the process of moving to a new home. It will encourage family discussions of arriving in America and the hopes and dreams that brought them here.

 From Home to Home has 29 colorful modules with hands-on activities. Children will:

       Use visual arts as a means to connect with some of the many ethnic groups in  Florida by creating art that mimics, in style, technique and materials, original arts and crafts that emanate from and symbolize various cultures and countries

·       Using a real scale to weigh tangible arguments for staying in or leaving home.

·       Participating in a family conversation in Germany in the wake of the Nuremberg Laws of the 1930s

·       Deciding which items are truly important to take and packing them into a small trunk. What is important to bring? What can one leave?

·       Shopping in a supermarket where everything is in a foreign language

·       Trying to fit a family of 10 into a small apartment

·       Finding their way to school

·       Building a neighborhood and deciding on the character of a community through the democratic process

·       "Americanizing" products brought from their countries of origin

From Home to Home explores issues related to relocating to a new land, such as leaving behind the familiarity of neighborhoods, schools, friends, food and language. The exhibit uses the Jewish immigration experience as an example of the acculturation process of people from all backgrounds and cultures, exploring the similarities and challenges people face. From Home to Home's interactive activity stations helps children explore many themes: Why Move? Where to Go? What to Take? New Beginnings; Helping Each Other; Change and Influence; Creative Expression.