We talked about the story of Purim by using a variety of books and songs, as well as a felt board story. The felt board story included flannel images of each of the main characters in the story, as well as hamantashen. The felt board was used to provide a very simple introduction to the Purim story and characters to such a young group of children.
We explored the concept of costumes and dressing up for Purim by offering a variety of dress-up clothes and costumes for the children to explore and try on. In addition to being an integral part of our Purim celebration, dress-up clothes also are a great way to help our children learn to dress themselves.
The children used stamps, markers, stickers, crayons, and colored pencils to decorate shalach manot bags to take home and share with their families. We later filled these bags with all sorts of Purim goodies! 
Using beans and rice, we filled plastic bottles and baby food containers to make groggers to use when we told the Purim story. The children enjoyed shaking these groggers and hearing the noises they made, but they enjoyed filling and dumping the plastic containers even more!
As a special cooking activity, the children helped bake hamantashen! One afternoon, we measured, added, and mixed all the different ingredients. The children helped scoop, pour, stir, and run the food processor. We let the dough refrigerate overnight, and then the next day we rolled out the dough, cut out circles, and filled and folded our hamantashen. Again, the children helped with each of these steps -rolling out the dough, placing and pressing down on plastic cups to make circles, and placing strawberry jam and chocolate chips in the middle of the cookies. They were certainly delicious!
Dressing up in costumes and enjoying our annual ECC Purim carnival and parade was definitely the highlight of the week! We all had a great time!
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