Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Bringing Purim into Kitah Bet

Purim is in the air!
On a wet Monday morning the children came in to streamers falling on their heads from the door post. Lewis wanted to know "who made that?" and  "how?" Freeda was happy to share, "I made it"
Rikki, who came in prepared with a gragger, recognized the same streamers from Morah Estee's classroom, and let us know "It's almost Purim".

One of our Judaic curricular goals with Kitah Bet, is to imbue our children with the feeling of happiness and excitement toward Jewish holidays.  We have many new trays for our morning activities, dress up in our dramatic play, puppet shows, songs and games all toward this goal.

Rikki's gragger, which Morah Adina told us is also called a monkey drum.

Princess Tirza

This year I decided to tell the children the Purim story before introducing any puppets or stick figures representing the characters in the story. This idea emerged from something I learned as a teacher, regarding allowing these important Jewish Heroes (and antagonists) to come to life in the children's own minds.
What did Esther, Haman, Mordechai  and King Achashverosh look like? Is our own perception based on the puppets and coloring pages from Kindergarten and Hebrew School or perhaps a Hollywood rendition?
After I told the story, I wanted to see what the children internalized and allow them to create their own pictures of what they imagined.  What came from this is our fabulous child centered Megilla hanging on our wall.  Please come in and have a look!

Drawing the different characters and parts of the Purim story

putting it all together

King Achashverosh


Our Megilla

Morah Leah



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