Pesach is coming! This is one of the busiest times of year for grown ups, whether it's at home or in the classroom. At home, the adults are busy cleaning, organizing, making lists, shopping and preparing for the holiday. At school, teachers are drowning in a Nile River of projects that are often heavy on adult-hands even as they are created by the children. There is so much to do to get ready for Pesach that it is easy to forget one of the greatest purposes of this holiday: the children! This is a holiday that commands us to invite our children to the table well past their bedtime and encourages that three letter word we often tire of hearing by 4PM: "Why?"
Last year at this time, I was pretty busy adding a brother to our family, so much of our home activities were set up to be simple, play based and child led. You can revisit those here! Even as a play at home Mommy who loves to plan and organize, I truly was able to embrace the simplicity of S experiencing the holiday through open ended exploration more than the typical structured approach I adopted throughout our homeschool experience. And this year, I am embracing that again! He is busy at school with projects, games, songs, learning and play. I am immensely grateful to his teachers and aware of the amount of work they are putting in this time of year, too! I'm pretty sure that employees at Dollar Trees around the nation wonder what we are all doing with cart loads of plastic disposable wine cups, serving plates, toy frogs, baby dolls and Easter baskets this time of year...
Whether you're looking for something to round out your home experience as Pesach draws near or something to enrich your classroom theme, these next few posts are for you! We'll start off with a playful way to use up the last bit of flour in your cupboard...
We've been exploring fairy tales here and this week we checked out a few versions of "The Little Red Hen" from our library. We also read a Pesach version of this book, The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah by Leslie Kimmelman. We invited some toy animals to join us in the story telling and then proceeded to test our hands at baking our own matzah!Since matzah used during Pesach must follow very strict guidelines and use only kosher for Pesach ingredients, we used this activity as an opportunity to experiment with the process and ate the goods before Pesach. I made sure to explain that to S in particular who would likely have expected this to be the matzah served at our seder!
Ingredients and Tools:
2 parts flour to one part water--we used about 2 cups of spelt flour and about a cup of water
a mixing bowl
a mixing spoon
measuring cups
forks
a rolling pin
a baking sheet
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour your flour into a mixing bowl and make a hole in the center (your little bakers can do this!). Now, start a timer for 18 minutes--this is to show your little bakers how the process of baking matzah must be complete in 18 minutes. We love our visual timer for this and I also explained that it's only to show how quickly this happens in a real matzah bakery so that no one would feel nervous about it. Slowly pour the water into the depression (little ones can help with this, too) and mix until a dough is formed. Split your dough into balls for each baker (we did two) and roll it flat. Poke holes in the dough with a fork. Next you're ready to place it on an ungreased cookie sheet (we lined ours with foil) and bake for about 3-4 minutes or until lightly golden on the edges. (Ours took a little longer as it was thicker--thinner matzahs will cook faster).
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| Mixing... |
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| Rolling.... |
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| Playing... |
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| Poking.... |
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| Not quite poking... |
In an ironic twist, my pickier eater loved the matzah and my equal opportunity chow hound did not! It was really neat to see and experience the process hands-on in real life.
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| "Yummy! I love this matzah!" |
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| "No no no no no!" |
We'll be back next week with a fun Pesach themed sensory bin... Until then, happy playing!
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