Dear Purple Room Families,

    It’s almost Pesach! The Purple Room is enjoying learning about this holiday in so many ways. For this week’s newsletter, we’d like to focus on some of the play the children have developed to explore the holiday.

The children were very interested in the mud bricks which the Jewish people had to make for Pharaoh in Egypt. We learned about how bricks are made, and the children played at making their own bricks in the outdoor learning space. They asked if we could also make bricks in the classroom, so we had a class meeting about bringing mud work inside. How could we play with mud and also keep our room clean? Make sure everyone has a turn? We decided on rules about mud, and wrote them up near the sensory table.

We brought in dirt and tools, and the children began to experiment with precisely how to make mud bricks. How much sand? How much water? How much dirt? Several of our trials didn’t work and crumbled. But some held! We built buildings and cities with these bricks in our sensory table.

We had also been watching videos and reading about how matzah is made. Some of the children began to pretend that their mud mixtures were matzah dough, not bricks. They talked to the Morahs about what kinds of tools and materials we would need to make “mudzah.”

The children found weeds that look like wheat. They gathered them and “ground” them with rocks. (Also, lots of mud was required for this process!)

They sifted dirt to get the “softest flour dirt” for the matzah, and discarded the rocks.

They cooperated with each other, taking turns to get water and discussing how much to add. Is the dough to thin? Too thick? Just right?

They asked the Morahs for flour, which we added to the batter. 

Quick! Get it rolled out so we can finish in 18 minutes!

We poked holes in the matzah before “baking” it.

Matzah, baking in our "oven."

Next week, we get to make real matzah with Rabbi Deitsch! The Purple Room will be ready!

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Athena