Bring Sukkot and the fall harvest into your home by building a tabletop Sukkah

Since Sukkot begins in five days, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, it’s time to get busy building a sukkah! Some families have a tradition to start building at sundown after Yom Kippur and others start the very next morning. In our family, we love building a sukkah each year, but it’s not always a traditional backyard sukkah. Some years, we build tiny sukkot made from graham crackers (yum) or even a delicate sukkah from fallen branches from the trees in our backyard!

This year, we’re having a fall harvest themed dessert, and we decided to build a tabletop sukkah for our party. We spent some time gathering branches and twigs, dusted them off, and set up a workspace outside to construct our pretty little sukkah (we even made an extra sukkah for grandma too). This is a lovely project to do with littles to bring your Sukkot celebration indoors (and bigger kids can work independently). So come build a tabletop sukkah with us!

Tabletop Sukkah

For each tabletop sukkah you will need:

6 twigs cut equally into either 10” or 12” lengths
16 twigs cut equally into 6” or 8” lengths (you may not need all of them, it depends on the sturdiness of your sukkah)
Twine
Scissors
Hot glue (very helpful - adults only please)
Branches with leaves
Flowers

Here’s how to build a tabletop sukkah:

1. Start with the back wall (use the photo as a guide).

You can use hot glue or tie the twigs together with twine (or both)! I strongly suggest hot glue, and if you want to cover up the glue, follow with the twine.

2. Build the left side wall…

and the right side wall. Use additional short twigs as needed. (Use hot glue too. You’ll thank me later for suggesting it. :)

3. Attach the side walls to the back wall.

4. Construct the roof (be sure to leave spaceto see the sky through the branches when you look up at night).

and attach the roof to the top of the sukkah.

And that’s it. You’ve built a sukkah! But wait, we’re not done yet. We are going to make our sukkah beautiful by decorating it with leaves and flowers. Tonight happens to be Shabbat, and we love having flowers on Shabbat (and bonus when it’s attached to a Sukkah).

5. Secure the leaves and flowers with floral wire or twine.

The first time we ever built a sukkah, we made it from instructions in a children’s holiday book. I noticed that as I built this one, I kept adding additional branches for sturdiness. Sukkahs are not meant to be a permanent. As they brace for rain, wind and uncertain weather, they can be be fragile and unsteady - just like day to day life. Making this sukkah reminded me of kind advice told to King Solomon in Jewish literature when he was looking for a cure for sadness. He was given a ring inscribed with words, “This too Shall Pass.” Like the sukkah is temporary, nothing lasts forever. Good times come, followed by hardships and then happy times once again. "Gam zeh ya'avor - This too shall pass." Luckily for us, Sukkot is considered the most joyous holiday of the Jewish year, so we hope building this Sukkah is a happy time.

We love our tabletop sukkah, and we can’t wait to have it tonight at Shabbat and for our Sukkot dessert party. If you want to build a sukkah, I hope these instructions and photos will help bring joy and happiness to your Sukkot celebrations!

Do you have any plans for Sukkot this year? Let us know in the comments below, and for more Sukkah building, you can: