Setting the Stage

Harrison and Isabella are busy painting a puppet theater that will soon be the site of our Keshet puppet productions of the story of Purim. The story has great drama and suspense, and already the children have learned not only to boo and hiss at Haman, but to firmly demand that he "get out of town."  Despite a generous application of paint, we expect the theater to be dry by Thursday so that we can all take turns bringing Queen Esther, King Ahasuerus, Mordecai and Haman to life in our classroom.

Preparing for Purim

The Keshet children are exploring the story of Purim in many different ways. Through story and picture books we have become acquainted with the characters and learned of Esther's bravery. We are also hearing the story through puppets, feltboard and in classroom conversations. Already we know that Purim is a fun holiday, a time to dress up, shake graggers and act out our own versions of the story.

Let the Purim fun begin!

We introduced Purim today and enjoyed some Purim fun!  We took out Mr. Parachute, made groggers, played with shaving cream, enjoyed a Purim story and listened to Purim music!

Let the Purim preparations begin

Since we are looking forward to sharing several aspects of the celebration of Purim with the Keshet class, we have already started sharing the story of Purim with the children.  We also started work on creating our groggers today.  Step one: decorate the outside.  Allison and Isabella took particular interest in this activity, spending a very long stretch of time working on attaching a beautiful variety of colorful stickers to their groggers.  Both girls were very focused, and as you can see in the photos, very happy with their creations.

Silly Rainbow Pasta Experiment!

The Lunch Bunch children decided in honor of Purim they wanted to do a silly experiment with pasta and food color coloring. After all Purim is, the silliest holiday!

Everyone took turns coloring the pasta with food coloring. I asked the children "What do you think will happen to the pasta when we cook it?" Will the pasta hold the food coloring and still be like a rainbow when the pasta is cooked?"
"Will the pasta still taste like pasta?" After an interesting discussion we cooked the pasta, and got ready to go outside to play on this beautiful Purim day. Before we went out, the children had the opportunity to taste the pasta. They were pleasantly surprised because the pasta actually tasted like pasta, and it was good! However the color changed, it was a pale red.

Thanks for a fun and very silly day! HAPPY PURIM!

The Purim Story Puppets

Gabi tells the story of Purim with our Shushan puppets. The children were then invited to be the puppeteers and retell the story of Esther. Micah is the king while Adam plays Haman. Everyone had fun shaking their groggers and making lots of noise when Haman's name was said aloud.