Purim!

Last week, we began to prepare in earnest for the holiday of Purim. With costumes, noisemakers, baking and silliness, Purim is usually one of the highlights of the year for children, and many of us grownups.

We began with some seriousness, digging into the story of the holiday as recorded in the Megillah. Last Monday, children looked at a megillah scroll and compared it to a Torah scroll. They spent the next two days reading a simplified, but loyal to the original text, version that I prepared especially for kindergarteners. You can access it here - we have the take-home copies on display in the hallway right now. It was wonderful to have so many families participate in the second readings at home - children we eager to share their answers to the "take home questions." We learned about the tradition of drowning out Haman's name with noisemakers, and the class created their own, Gan-style (upcycled and very individual...) graggers.

If you would like a refresher course in the story, the current second grade made this video with Gretchen Siegchrist when they were in the Gan.

While studying the story in English, we have been also learning the names of the characters and some other Purim vocabulary in Hebrew. We've also converted the imagination station into a castle, and added some cardboard castle materials to the block area.

We've spent quite a bit of time focusing on the main characters in the Purim story, and wondering about how they might have felt at various moments. We've used this as an opportunity to think about how our facial expressions often can reveal how we are feeling. For the past few school days, we've used some of our Gan upcycled treasures to make faces, and show a range of emotions with just a few simple materials. We turned this exploration into collages of the Purim characters - after writing about their characters tomorrow, we'll put these on display at Congregation B'nai Israel for the Purim festivities. They are really quite wonderful!

We are still working on writing how to books, and finishing up our maple syrup unit with a delicious pancake lunch - thanks to Pam Hannah for coming and cooking on Friday!

We're applying some of what we learned in our trash unit by helping the school create low-waste, upcycled Purim baskets for Thursday. Thanks to everyone who contributed boxes!

We've enjoyed all the special Adar days, but think formal day may have been my favorite.