Purim, Holi, and More Math

We started off our week with some great pretending.  We went sledding down to an ice skating pond and skated around.  We had a dance party and we made pirate hats, shaped like triangles.  We pretended to be pirates, with our hats and a flag.  She used a tube to create a larger version of her finger puppet, the black ghost Bob.  She's been busy turning boxes into rocket ships, building tents for camping, and making polka-dot princess hats.

Purim is a Jewish holiday, relating the story of Esther.  I thought it particularly appropriate for Genevieve as she is going through the princess phase.  We read Purim Superhero and Cakes and Miracles for Purim.  Genevieve dressed as a superhero, Tobias was a cowboy, and I was a witch.  We put on a puppet show acting out the story of Esther.  We also read the story of Esther in Tomie dePaola's Bible Stories.

Holi is an Indian holiday.  The night before, there is a large bonfire held to represent the story of Prahlad.  He was the son of an evil king, who thought everyone should worship him.  Prahlad refused, and his father sentenced him to death in a fire.  He survived a walk through the flames.  The next day celebrates Krishna, who would spray Radha and her maids with colored water.  When they went to clean themselves, he often stole their clothes, teasing them.  To celebrate, we related these stories and compared the story of Prahlad to that of Shadrach, Meshach and Obendigo.  We read stories about life in India, like The Jungle Book, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and Chanda and the Mirror of Moonlight.  They are all longer picture books, but Chanda had Hindi print as well.  We used powder paint, spray bottles and stamp pads to create art.  We mixed in finger and handprints, because of some of our other reading.

We read 10 Pigs, Little Goblins Ten, A Triangle for Adaora, Alpha prints 123, and Zin Zin Zin a Violin.  Many of these are favorites.  A Triangle for Adaora has great pictures of life in Africa and inspired our own shape hunt in the neighborhood.  It was cracking Genevieve up that Tobias has a circle head.  We talked about big and small, using stacking cups to identify which was biggest and smallest.  We used our cake to divide big and little, and split the cake evenly.  We played some Hide and Seek, practicing counting to 10.  Tobias has been working on building towers, so we counted blocks as we built and noted which tower was tallest or which had the most blocks.  Tobias also asked for some puzzle time, so we had an afternoon of puzzles and board games.