WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER - the Holiday messages continue...

When learning the stories and practices of each holiday there are also important values we extract from the holiday and delve into in an age appropriate way.
Purim is a fun joyous holiday that can seem like just a great story of a king and an heroic queen and a holiday with really fun practices like having a holiday meal, dressing up and giving food gifts to our friends. But there is so much more we want our children to experience with the holidays.
Of course when teaching the holidays the children are involved in the joyous practices of holiday since happiness and celebration of the holiday is an important feeling the children should associate with holidays.

Personalizing the holidays message:
After completing the Purim story, we wanted to highlight one of the holiday’s messages: caring and helping one another. The children related to this messages as they were talking about how “Hashem help all the people. Queen Esther help the people and Rabbi Mordechai help the people.”

We know that it is important to teach children appropriate behavior from a young start to get them into good habits and practices. We want the children to know how important it is to care for others and want to help each other. So, we think, what is appropriate for a two year old in the area of relating to others? Toddlers are always and watching what others are doing and ready to mimic that behavior. When toddlers see how others treat each other or how others care for each other through their actions, they can be encouraged to do the same. While toddlers are not yet ready to emotionally relate to others, with guidance, good modeling and reinforcement they can be sensitive to see the needs of others and respond in an empathetic way.

In our classroom this plays out as,
1. We are encouraged to help others,
2. When someone helps us we acknowledge with an appropriate behavior- hug, smile or words of thank you!

TAKE A LOOK AT HOW WE ACT IN EMPATHETIC WAYS


Meir needed help opening his pretzels at snack time.
Dylan helped Meir to open his bag of pretzels.
Thank you Dylan - that was so helpful!


Miriam Sara was looking for her shoes.
Maggie found them and brought them to Miriam Sarah.
Thank you Maggie - that was so helpful!


Shayna noticed that her friend Mika was sad.
Shayna rubbed Mika's back to help her feel better.
Thank you Shayna - that was so caring!

To see more photos of times when we help each other, take a look on the wall outside our classroom.

Happy Purim!

We hope you had an enjoyable Purim holiday.
We would like to share with you how we explored the holiday of Purim in our class.

“There is a holiday coming up – it’s called Purim! Let’s tell the story of Purim story so we will know what Purim is all about…”
With that introduction, we started a puppet show telling of the story of long ago. We learned the names of the characters, described what they looked like, where they lived and what they did.
As the story slowly unfolded the children concretized that part of the story by decorating a picture of that scene. By now the children have completed a full Purim story book, each page decorated with a different art medium.

Enjoy reading the book to your child, or allow your child to read the story to you using the pictures as their guide. Ask your child questions about the characters, where they are, and what they are doing. With time and space to process and think about the question before they respond, you’ll be excited to see how much they can tell!

Here is the story of Purim in the children’s words:

“Mordechai. Esther. Hug Torah. Paint on house”
“Mordechai and Esther. Don’t have a crown yet. That Mordechai house.”

“Crown on Esther. Esther over here, in the big palace – not the house. King over here.”
“King and Queen in a palace. Wear a crown on their head, and a cape. Queen Esther over here”
“Haman hurt a people. They scared a Haman”
“People so sad. Not nice to the people”
“So happy! Thank you Hashem. No Haman. Haman far away!”
“People so happy. Hashem help them. Mordechai help them. Queen Esther help them and a King help them.”
“Gragger. Twirl – noise. Hamantash hot. In oven. Blow, blow, blow. Eat it. Megillah over there”
“A hamantash cookie. One, two, three. A gragger. Twirl it around and around. It goes faster and faster. Here’s a megillah”Putting vocabulary into context

In learning the story of Purim, the children were exposed to new vocabulary words including: king, queen, crown, palace, gragger (noise maker), hamentash cookie, costume, holiday and more. But what do these new words mean? When we say the words "palace," "king" and "queen," the child needs context in order to help them understand the meaning. What is different about a king / queen as opposed to boy/ girl?
We looked at pictures of what a king and queen look like and where they live. Additionally we provided a hands-on experience by visiting the pretend palace set up in the school lobby. We dressed up like kings and queens – in crowns, necklaces, dresses, and capes - to imagine ourselves in these roles.

We were able to assess the children’s understanding of these words through the comments they made as we read our Purim story book. While looking at the first page the children commented “Esther no crown. Esther house.” But then on the next page, they noticed, “Esther have a crown- Esther a queen!”

We develop our skills as we learn about the holiday practices

One of the ways we celebrate Purim is by dressing up in costumes. The children were given the opportunity to make their own crowns which they could wear for the holiday. As we made the crowns we spoke about the colors of our crowns and the colors of our friends' crowns. There were lots of different colors used – it is amazing to see that the children recognize and identify their crowns and the crowns of their friends based on the colors.

We have been using the symbols of Purim to play different skill-based games. This play gives su exposure to the symbols as we learn various developmental skills.

One game was matching cards based on size, big/small or big/medium/small.

Another game was counting the tips of the crowns. Morah helped the children to count each tip and be careful not to skip!

Following a recipe:

On Purim it we traditionally eat triangle-shaped hamantash cookies filled with jam. We wanted to make the cookies with the children - with them understanding how putting food ingredients together makes a new final product. So we created our own recipe book called "How to Make Hamantashen". Our book tells only one step / ingredient per page - keeping the children focused on their task. We "read" the ingredient, counted the amount we needed, and added it to the bowl. Then we turned to the next page of the book for the next ingredient, until we finished all the steps.

When we had added all the ingredients and mixed them, we were ready for the messy part! We rolled out the dough, used cookie cutters to cut out “circle” shapes, put jelly in the middle, and then folded them into “triangle” shapes. The best part was when the cookies had cooled down and we were ready to sample our hard work!

Here are some sample pages from our recipe book:

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Chaya K, Morah Chaya G and Morah Batsheva