The children in Shalom Chaverim this week were busy exploring hamantashen– through stories, through singing, through sensory play and baking.
We talked a lot about mislach manot. We are learning to share– and learning how happy it makes others when we do! We shared toy feed around the classroom, and created our own baskets to bring mislach manot home to a special person in our lives.
We even created our own pretend hamantaschen at the play dough table, exploring the way we can use our etzbaot (fingers!) to change a shape from a circle into a triangle, just like Haman’s hat in the Purim story!
Then, we set to work creating our own hamantashen. It takes a lot of work and a lot of patience to measure all the ingredients! Fortunately all of our chaverim are up to the task of pouring, stirring and mixing together. 
As we add ingredients together, we notice the dough is starting to look different. Children observed that it smelled like “cookies” or “sugar.”
After the dough was finally all mixed together, we set to work cutting it into circles, adding some jelly to the middle, and pinching up the corners. Pinching can be a challenge for little hands, but we kept trying. 
While the cookies were baking, we created Purim masks together.
Finally the cookies were finished. The excitement was palpable in the room as we waited to taste our handiwork. We noticed that some of the hamantashen’s shapes were different.
We enjoyed our special Purim treat together!
