We have had such a fun week celebrating Purim. We spent the week learning the story of brave Esther who saved the Jewish people from Haman. We've spent time reading books about this story and discussing the importance of this holiday. We also turned our housekeeping center into a costume zone complete with crowns and masks of different Purim characters. We also disguised ourselves as different animals with masks and dress up clothes. The kids dressing in disguise is a Purim custom. It demonstrates the fact that the miracle of Purim was disguised in more natural methods as opposed to an obvious miracle (this is also why the kids wore costumes on Thursday). It was a great week of imaginative play!
We wanted to spend some time this week focusing on the four mitzvah of Purim. The first of these is Mishloach Manot. This is the giving of food to others. To demonstrate this we made our own baskets using paper plates and markers. After folding them into a triangle, we filled them with an apple and homemade hamantaschen that the kids made. After putting food in their baskets, they gave them to a friend in the classroom. As we made these exchanges, we talked about the importance of giving to others and being thankful for what we were given. We also gave extra Tzedakah this week as well as listened to the reading of the Megillah (both mitzvah). The kids made groggers (noise makers) that they shook when the name of Haman was read aloud. We really enjoyed this as the Megillah was read in Hebrew! Another mitzvah for Purim is having a festive meal together. While we didn't have an actual meal (other than our fun lunches), we did eat some special challah during this time (it had sprinkles...a big deal in this classroom!)
Throughout the week, we ended up talking about castles and what they might look like. We thought it would be fun to make our own castles. Each child drew a picture of a castle complete with plenty of details. Before we started drawing, we discussed what a castle might look like and the purposes of it's different features. We also found some pictures of real castles and studied what they were made of and their different shapes. After drawing our castles, we set out different types of building materials in stations. The kids went to work making a 3D versions of their castle. We encouraged them to take their artwork with them and use it as a guide as they constructed their castles. As we built, we discussed the different aspects of a castle such as motes and walls for protection. Here are some things they said about their castles while building...
Harry: "It has to be really dark in the castles rooms."
Max: "I have big legos to make a big castle."
Mariano: "I'm building stairs for my castle with legos."
Ethan: "I have snap-cubes to build a trap for the bad guys in my castle."
Shlomo: "I'm going to make a bouncy house castle."
Van: "I use snap-cubes to build a rainbow castle. It has a boulder on top to get the bad guys."
James: "I have blocks to build a bridge, rising water, and a tall slippery castle so bad guys can't get up. It's King Achashverosh's castle."
Taliah: "I'm using blocks and there is a circle to build up. There are trees and a tunnel to get in the castle."
Maddie: "I have legos to build a pretty cool window for my castle."
Sally: "I'm building purple and pink legos to make a table and I'm going to make rugs. My castle is a rainbow castle."
Kayla: "I use legos to build a porch and a tower and water."
Scarlett: "I used blocks for a castle. It has water and big roofs."
Of course the most exciting part of the week was Thursday (Purim). We loved all the costumes! They seemed to have a great time showing them off to us and their peers. We spent the morning in the synagogue listening to the Megillah reading and then got to play at the carnival. The older children in the school built games for us to play. Each game had an older student there to show the kids how to play and give out tickets. We let the kids wonder around the room playing all the games and when they were done they turned their tickets in for an awesome prize. The kids did a fantastic job with this! We also got to take a ride on a pony this year! I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of our week. Of course they loved it! It was a great experience for them and we are sending out a HUGE thank you to everyone who put it together! I feel that we all learned a lot this week - not just about Purim, but also about the Jewish culture. We took a lot of pictures this week, so I hope you enjoy them!
Love,
Ms. Rachael
Approaches to Learning:
- Reason about events, relationships, or problems.
- Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
- Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
- Try to solve problems encountered in play.
- Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.
- Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
- Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.
- Recognize own feelings and describe them some of the time.
- Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
- Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
- Retell one or tow events from a story read aloud.
- Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
- Recall some details in stories read aloud.
- Incorporate favorite parts of literary texts into play activities.
- Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
- Investigate solutions to simple problems.
- Locate patterns in the environment.
- Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
- Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
- Represent simple two-dimensional geometric shapes.
- Associate time concepts with a clock.
I have to start with these 2 pictures...seriously, how awesome/hilarious are these kids!
Making our groggers in preparation for Purim...
Preparing our Mishloach Manot for our friends...
We used our drawing and building skills to construct some awesome castles!
Playing dress up in our classroom castle...
Listening to the reading of the Megillah and enjoying our carnival!...
We rode a horse today!...
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