Easy Yummy Hamantashen Recipe

I make this every year and people LOVE it and ALWAYS ask for the recipe... hope you enjoy it too!

Soft Hamantashen Recipe:

1 Box Yellow Cake Mix

1 cup flour

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons water

Filling of your choice*

Directions:

1- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2- Spray cookie sheet with cookie spray.

3- In a large mixing bowl combine flour and cake mix.

4- Stir in water and eggs until a stiff dough forms.

5- On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/8 inch.

6- Cut into 2-3 inch circles, I use the top of a drinking glass dipped in flour before cutting.

7- Place dough 2 inches apart on cooking sheet.

8- Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle.

9- Fold the sides in to form three corners (triangle).

10- Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

11- Cool for 2 minutes on cookie sheets and remove to wire racks to cool completely.

*I took plain macadamia nuts, poured melted chocolate chips over them and mixed them in a bowl. I then place the nuts covered in chocolate on a cookie sheet by the teaspoon full and froze them like cookies. Once frozen, I used each "chocolate mac nut cookie" as a filler for the hamantashen- Chocolate Macadamia Nut Hamantashen- YUM!

Some more Purim activities and other fun stuff

Here are some Purim puppets we downloaded from www.chinuch.org. We laminated them and glued them to Popsicle sticks- a HUGE hit with the kids, they were "playing" the Purim story for hours, each one as a different character with the puppets, it was fabulous.

This is "King Achashverosh's Palace" with little pockets to put the puppets in, so simple and so great!

Loving the idea of the Montessori "prepared environment", I prepared a bunch of different activities for the kids with every thing they need and worked out great. Here is a clown mask:

A Palace kit:

Just some letter/picture matching...

Rhyming cards...
A finger puppet activity ready to get done:

A gragger activity: Paint the outside of the paper plate, let it dry. Place dry beans in one plate, cover with the other plate and staple together- voila! a gragger!

That's it for now,

Some Purim Fun and more

Hamantash Lacing: I just cut out triangles from Manila hanging folders, stuck in a red center and used a hole puncher to make holes. Took string and tied it to one of the holes and voila, the kids loved it- will definitely do more sewing from now on!

This is just a cute little something I found in the flour before making schnitzel for Shabbos:)
We made jello using Kojel, put it on a baking pan and let it set. Then used Alef Bet cookie cutters and Purim Cookie cutters to make shapes. The kids got such a kick out of handling the jello, they loved it:)

Just a fun Eric Carle Alphabet game, really educational and lots of fun...
Painting food we made out of clay, then baked it so it got rock hard and then painted it. Can use it for brachos sorting or food grouping or just plain old pretend play, another hit!

Here's to a great week!

I spy Alef Bet, a homemade compass and sandpaper letters

I got this great idea from another awesome homeschooling mom over at Counting Coconuts- but tweaked it with Alef Bet "beads" which are made from white beans. I used a Sharpie to write each letter on a bean and dyed the rice blue using food coloring.

Munchkin uses her Alef Bet chart to mark off the letters she "spies" until she finds them all! We use the same white beans as "markers" for the Alef Bet chart which I laminated for future use.

We also made a compass, just to satisfy The Little Guys curiosity... it was super easy and such a great learning experience.

Just take a saucer or bowl and fill with water. Then take a piece of cork (we used a cork wick holder left over from our oil Chanukah menorah) and place a needle on it, very carefully. Make sure to stroke the needle on a magnet a few times to activate its magnetic energy. Just place it on the cork and watch it automatically face north.

We turned the saucer around, only to watch the needle stay put. We also carefully turned the needle to face south and it automatically turned around by itself to face north. The Little Guy was AMAZED!

My sister in law gifted us with a set of Montessori Sand Paper Alef Bet letters. The kids love lining them up in order as well as feeling the letters.

I went one step further and made script Alef Bet letters out of sand paper and glued them to the back of the corresponding letter to get the kids familiar with script. So far, so good- they love them and its a GREAT introduction to Hebrew writing.

Here's the front:

and back:

Have a wonderful week,

A Purim Activity Pack!

A Purim Activity Pack

Click Here to View

Enjoy!

Some fun activites

Some fun activites that have been keeping the kiddos busy...

Alef Bet wheel, you can add different vowels as well as use pegs to match up the letters. Great for beginners in letter recognition.

Same idea, just with colors:
Used an ice tray and rubber erasers, color sorting. I had tongs but my munchkin got impatient and just used her fingers to place the erasers in each correct hole:)
Beading with pipe cleaners- they can match the beads to the same colored pipe cleaner or make their own design...

Now this was a HUGE hit: Made 2 felt boards using a picture frame and felt (got this amazing idea here), then cut out different shaped eyes, noses, mouths, hair and hair accessories and the little ones created all types of faces, over and over again-
The felt boards:

Self portrait of the little guy:)

Classic Cheerios book with Cheerios... we didn't do this in a long time, so it was fun.

Movable Hebrew Alphabet with board- another great hit, the little guy made tons of words, it was fantastic...
and lastly, Counting Chocolate Chips- you can use anything, really. This is more for number recognition and counting for little ones- you can make lady bugs with spots, bees with stripes, get creative:)
And thats what we were up to today...

Hope to create and post more soon, wishing all a wonderful week,

Homeschooling 101

Homeschooling (for us) is such a transient journey. I used to rely on a "curriculum" with worksheets and workbooks. And when any of the kids did not want to do something, I would get frustrated.

I also noticed that when they were interested in something, they could do it for an hour or more, completely engrossed.

And so we have begun leaning toward the child directed, Montessori prepared environment approach where we make every opportunity a learning opportunity and move in the direction that the kids are interested in.

It has worked amazingly.

My big guy is very interested in the Jewish kings and so we have started learning about the Kings of Israel, starting with King Shaul (from The Family Midrash- Kings 1). He finds this so fascinating, we can read about it for hours. He's 5.

We also have a garden that the kids enjoy working on. Here are some photos of some of the things we have:

wild rasberries

our avocado tree

parsley

basil

broccoli

We also have carrots, cabbage, zucchini, lettuce and beets. Its great for them to pick it, wash it, prepare it and eat it.

Here's a little chart we have that we update every morning. On the bottom is a moon chart, we mark off what the moon looks like during each phase:

Here's to a great week!