Purim Theme: Another Peek Inside Our Playroom!

Our Royal Jewels tin includes a
collection of rhinestones and
buttons as well as a set of
tongs and an ice cube tray for
sorting and fine motor practice.

We are officially in Purim mode here! I couldn't wait to set up our play and learning area. I've included a variety of play and learning materials to encourage child-led play and exploration. Some of our activities will be guided and include my involvement, but my goal is for my son to be able to navigate the space independently and engage in the activities of his choice. Here's a peek at some of our materials and activities--hope you'll join us in some extra joyful playing now that the Jewish month of Adar is in full swing!

This Invitation to Create Crowns process art activity has been added to our art center. I've included foam crowns (Dollar Tree) and a variety of small parts for gluing on as well as some glue and craft sticks for gluing with. Given directions and a demonstration of how to carry the tray from the shelf to his table and to take an art mat to go beneath his work area, my son can access this activity whenever the mood strikes and help create decorations for our home in this festive time!

Our Writing Center bin now includes his journals and writing tablet as well as some Purim coloring pages. He especially enjoyed making cards in our last unit on Community Helpers, so I stashed some of those along with some stickers in our bin as well. I also included some picture vocabulary cards to help inspire some Purim themed drawing and dictation! You can print your own set for free along with several other useful activities here. Many of our learning activities were also obtained from this free printable set courtesy of a Jewish Homeschool Blog.

A big part of our STEM activities this unit will involve building about castles. These chalkboard blocks are a fun way to include some artwork into architecture and engineering. He can build with them on their own or add them to other blocks and building materials. And when he's done doodling, he can erase and doodle again!

Our Purim Picture Match-It Game and Purim Rhyming Word Match-It Game are activities that will require more adult involvement at my son's age and developmental level. I've affixed Velcro dots to the back of each laminated picture and provided sheets of felt for work mats to use with these materials.

Our Math Skills drawer includes our favorite DIY Counting Crowns one-to-one-correspondence game and a printed/laminated Counting Hamentaschen game!

Our felt wall is ready for some Purim story telling and dramatization.

Our Sounds Of Purim Observation Station is a great way to combine science and music as we learn about graggers.

It's a special mitzvah of Purim to give extra tzedakah. This pretend tzedakah box (made from a recycled cocoa powder container) and plastic coins (Dollar Tree party supply section) make a great fine motor activity for even very young toddlers.

Some of our castle-building materials including some great printable castle building prompts
from this wonderful post on the blog "Fun-a-Day."

Our dress-up station! I've provided some small hand-held mirrors to go along with our collection of costumes, props and jewelry. If you have a full-length mirror that is child-safe, this is a wonderful addition to a play area.

I laminated some of our favorite Purim activity pages for use (and reuse!) with dry erase markers. You can also use a dry-erase sleeve for this purpose--it's a great way to offer children multiple attempts with an activity as well as to combine with playdough or small parts while limiting the amount of paper waste.

Our Purim Small World sensory bin is ready to go with Sweet
Orange Scented "Persian Rice!"

If you'd like to make your own batch of Sweet Orange Scented Persian Rice to use for sensory play this Purim, follow the recipe below:
You will need:

• uncooked rice to desired amount
• yellow food coloring
• alcohol based hand sanitizer
• orange essential oil 

To make your play rice, pour your desired amount of rice into a ziplock bag. Add a generous amount of food coloring (I used about 20-30 drops for this amount of rice) and a few squirts of hand sanitizer (this will help the color spread and adhere). Lastly add several drops of orange essential oil, zip tightly and shake, shake, shake! Allow your rice to dry completely before covering and storing in your sensory bin (it dries fairly quickly) and it will last for years to come. You may need to update your scent over time. 

A Peek Inside Our Playroom: Getting Ready for PURIM

The Jewish month of Adar is welcomed with two days of Rosh Chodesh, beginning at sundown this Saturday night and continuing through Monday evening. This is a month in which we are commanded to increase our joy and happiness as we get ready to celebrate the holiday of Purim! Purim is one of the most joyful and fun holidays for children and adults alike. We wear costumes and enjoy a festive meal. We eat special treats like hamentaschen and give gifts of food (shalach manot) as well as extra tzedakah (charity) to those in need. One of the most important parts of Purim is hearing the Megillah, a story that recounts the Jews' miraculous deliverance from the wicked rule of Haman in the days of Queen Esther of Persia. While the story is quite graphic and can even be frightening (particularly for young children), we value the importance of teaching it in an age appropriate manner to our children and my very favorite way to teach is through play and hands-on experiences. The day of Purim is one we spend as a family giving out shalach manot to friends and neighbors, attending Megillah readings, parties and festive meals at our local shuls and celebrating with delicious treats and fun costumes. At home, we are already getting into the Purim spirit with some themed playroom set-up.

Purim is holiday that is fun for all ages! Even as a baby, my son loved making noise with graggers...

...and dressing up in costume!

Some of our highlighted activities will include:

delivering shalach manot to neighborhood friends last year

• a dramatic play shalach manot sweets & treats shop
• a field-trip to our post office to send out shalach manot to family members who are not nearby
• learning activities to explore the shape of a triangle--a common theme in Purim related to the shape of Haman's hat and our favorite Purim cookie, hamentaschen!
• invitations to build castles using a variety of mediums and building materials 
• story telling and sequencing using costumes, sensory bins, felt boards, books, puppets and props as well as songs, music and movement
• a science exploration of different sounds and instruments related to the use of graggers (noisemakers) to blot out the wicked Haman's name during the reading of the Megillah
• a cool hands-on science exploration to excavate "treasures" from an ice castle
• some Purim themed gross motor games to get us moving indoors and out
• games and learning activities to build descriptive language for different emotions and recognition of facial expressions
• cooking and baking activities to prepare holiday treats
• plenty of dramatic play and opportunities to wear and create costumes
• process art and project opportunities to make festive decorations and holiday props

 Here's a peek at some of our favorite activities and materials from Purims past! I hope you'll join us over the days to come as we explore some great learning and play activities in our home preschool.

Counting Crowns combines foam crown shapes (Dollar Tree) with numerals and corresponding dots for visual representation along with glass gems (you can use plastic jewels, buttons, sequins or beads) to help teach one-to-one correspondence for younger mathematicians

More advanced mathematicians can begin simple adding activities with the same materials

We love using a variety of props to retell the Purim story. Puppets, costumes, pictures and flannel board sets make story telling and sequencing activities a fun, hands-on experience.

Last year, each of my students (ages 4-5) helped to make their own version of this felt story Megillah using a large rectangle of felt and two Velcro dots for secure closure. We included laminated castles and story characters with Velcro dots as well so that they could enjoy some quiet story telling while the Megillah was read in shul, a time when we are commanded to hear each and every word. As it is so important for children and adults alike to hear the Megillah, we must get creative with ways to include and engage our children while limiting any extraneous noise (other than the important use of graggers and noisemakers to blot out Haman's name!) so that everyone can fulfill this special mitzvah together!

We had a lot of fun dying our own rainbow rice last year for a Purim themed sensory bin!

Small costume props and jewelry, toys and castle shaped buckets made for some great small world play to retell the story of Purim in our sensory bin. This year we are looking forward to adding one more theme-related element to a fresh batch of play rice: a sweet orange scent to remind us of Persia, where the story of Purim took place!

For some additional great ideas and materials, check out this free, printable Purim Activity Pack and 25 Fun Activities for Purim, both provided by the wonderfully talented blogger of A Jewish Homeschool Blog.

If you're looking for a simple, free printable castle coloring page for some Purim story themed artwork, check out this one!

Here are some great free printable photographs of actual castles to inspire your little architect courtesy of the blog "Fun-A-Day."

We bake hamentaschen every year using our favorite family recipe. We also had a lot of fun using this peanut butter playdough recipe to practice shaping (and eating) hamentaschen last year! It's a great one for kids--WARNING: adults may like it, too!

Hope you're feeling as excited for Purim as I am, now and that this will tide you over until my next Purim-themed post. Until then...

 Happy Playing and may we all experience an increase in joy this month!

Community Helpers Theme: Teachers & Librarians

With some of our favorite school themed books and toys as well as an opportunity to decorate a cover page to the ABC book we've been compiling over the past several month, we were ready to begin a day of learning about two of our favorite community helpers: teachers and librarians!

It was time to kick off our teacher and librarian day here as we progress through our Community Helpers Theme. We've taken my son to the library from before he was even old enough to stay awake for a Curious George book (pictured left)! With a Mommy who teaches preschoolers and a Tatty who teaches college students, it is unlikely he will grow up with any questions about what teachers and librarians do. Our Teachers and Librarians day was, therefore, a great day to set up some fun play centers with activities to review some of librarians' and teachers' favorite topics: letters, numbers, colors and shapes!

We've been learning letters through multi-sensory exposure since the beginning of last summer. Whenever we did a project to go with a particular letter, I've saved it in sheet protectors a binder. Today my little guy used letter stamps, stickers and markers to decorate his own cover page (above) and now I've set our book-in-progress out on his bookshelf so he can access it anytime to go through the letters he already knows.

busy at work!

We are big fans of dry erase markers here! He has had a lot of fun doodling in this book about colors and shapes we found at the Dollar Tree, erasing it and doodling again!

We managed to coincidentally sync up again with our Mommy & Me playgroup that is also covering Community Helpers this session. They had Teacher day on the same day we did and my son LOVED this laminated shape page with playdough. He spent a long time naming his shapes and smooshing playdough over top!

He was literally dancing he was so excited by these felt letters, numbers, and shapes from Target's Dollar Deals section. Does the "R" and "N" mean he wants to be a registered nurse when he grows up??

We LOVE letter magnets here. I usually set out only one letter at a time as we learn our alphabet letters, but this time I set out all of the letters and was amazed at how many he knew/remembered!

This chalkboard contact paper makes a great vertical work station. He dictated a story about drawing our house, a shul "for Hashem" and a rabbi inside the shul!

I combined a felt number card set (also from Target) and some school-themed mini erasers for this one-to-one correspondence math activity.

He LOVED it!

At the end of our day, he grabbed his basket of felt letters, shapes and numbers and announced "I'm going to school! Bye bye!" That's either a homeschool success or failure, I'm not sure I've decided which! 😋

We finished our play-based day of learning about teachers and librarians with a fun waterplay activity in the bathtub I call "Alphabet Soup!" We'll be back next time with some fun and hands-on exploration of Construction Workers, tools and trucks! Until then...

He couldn't even wait to get undressed and for the tub to fill up before testing out our Alphabet Soup activity!

Happy Playing!

Winter Theme: Snow Play and Snow Days!

Ah, Winter! I no longer live in the incredibly snowy climate of my own childhood (and cannot say I miss it either), but we do get some here and the whole season just has a whimsical and playful feel to me. There is no playground like the one you can make yourself from a perfect, wet snowfall. And when you get too cold and it's time to come inside for a break, there is plenty of seasonal fun to be had indoors! As I gradually set up our learning and play-space for the Winter season, I keep a few things in mind.

Snowman Bowling Set--created from styrofoam
cups and permanent marker. Five minutes of
preparation time and yields several times
that amount of time in tossing a "snowball" (we
used a small rubber ball) and re-stacking!

• I favor toys and materials that encourage abstract thought and imagination. This is often a season of accumulation (and I don't just mean in feet of snow). There are a LOT of toys on the market and it can be hard to sort through what's a must-have for all time and what's just the newest trend this season. [I still want a Tamagotchi, I don't CARE what you say!] For what it's worth, I continue to try to purchase only toys that don't have a short developmental shelf-life--that is, they are things my child can grow with and continue to use as he gets older and/or things that will stand the test of time and play to be functional for future little ones. 



We ended up with a LOT of these packing peanuts last year. They are
great for crafts (they stick together with just water) and sensory play!

•  Use what you have! In addition to being particular about what types of toys we invest in or suggest to doting grandparents this time of year, I also make a lot of our playthings and learning materials. There are a lot of fun activities you can prepare for and even with your children using items you already have in your home. Hitting the kitchen together on a cold day is a great way to warm up and spend time together--and you can cook up things to eat as well as things to play with while you're there.

• ALWAYS BE PREPARED! As a kid, I used to listen for the sound of plows driving by while it was still dark out because that most certainly meant a snow day when the snow came up. As parents, we often live in fear of the dreaded snow day. What will we do now? I keep a keen eye toward a play-space that is conducive to longer (even unexpected) stretches of independent play. I also keep a stocked U-Pick-a-Project Basket of easy to set up crafts and activities that can be pulled out for such an occasion. Toy rotation and a playroom set up with a minimalist approach also means that in a pinch, you can get an old activity out of the closet and it will have that just-like-new feeling again. And if like us, you sometimes feel the amount of presents at the holidays and birthdays is too overwhelming to rip into all at once, you can put a few away for those unexpected sick-at-home or snowed-in days. 

Do you wanna build a snowman?

I love flannel boards and felt sets for story telling and play. I have an area of our house with a lot of empty low wall space that is covered in felt just for this purpose. I also frequently create temporary flannel board spaces, like this poster board wrapped in felt and hung on a door front. Most of my felt sets are homemade but I have also found some great ones at thrift stores. With the set-up pictured below, we've had a lot of fun over the years building and accessorizing our own snowmen and penguins. The doorknob made a great place to hang the felt pieces not in use and to store the set between play and story telling sessions.

Speaking of building a snowman indoors...never underestimate the fun that can be head playing with and exploring snow INSIDE. Whether it's too deep, too cold or just too much to get outside in the snow, using a plastic bin indoors filled with snow can be a fabulous alternative. Throw in some shovels for digging, some containers and buckets for filling or even some colored water for "painting."  It's guaranteed to be a winner without the stress of stuffing everyone into snowsuits.

And when you do have the patience, energy and climate conditions to stuff into snowsuits, there is definitely a whole white world of fun waiting out there. Don't be afraid to bring along some spray bottles with colored water to paint that world a different color or two!

This blast from the past photo is here to remind you to Stay Warm and Happy Playing!