Parsha, Purim and Hamantashen!

hamantashenWell, I finally did it. I now have a Facebook page! Just go to Jewish and Homeschooling in an Amazing World and you can join the group.  This will hopefully be a medium where I can also post other interesting links and information that I find. Purim is but a few days away and I saw that someone posted hamantashen on Facebook and realized that with all our planning we did, we did not plan making any this year! Oops. That will not do. The little one and I made a batch of hamantashen after supper tonight.

For all those who are wondering, yes, we are having school this week. Room613 is not in session, but Harper Academy is. We swing to our own tune over here, though this year I actually had a boy who finally realized that everyone else around has the week off. The nice thing about homeschooling is that we are not tied to any other schedule but our own. We have a revised schedule for this week – trying to get everything except math done before lunch. We are doing pretty good with it. This afternoon we worked more on our Purim booklets that I printed out from Chinuch.org. Something fun but with some learning.

I had been alternating between parsha and reading the story of Purimkohain gadol (mainly for the benefit of the little one, but it still gives me a chance to add in stuff for the older ones.) Yesterday was parsha day. It was a perfect parsha for in it we talk about the clothes for the kohanim and the kohain gadol, and guess who is excited about being a kohain gadol for Purim this year? Thanks goes to his wonderful Aunt who had no more use for the costume and sent it to him. He was very excited and proud to be able to take out the costume and put it on for we really needed it for school! We compared what clothing the kohain gadol really wore with the costume version. There were a few differences, some which the boys asked if we could fix. But even if we don’t add any of the missing fixtures, we all agreed that it was a great costume and the little one looked quite spiffy. 🙂 The costume was put away again until Motzei Shabbos.

This past week I have been working on the narrations for the boy who was needing help. Last week I wrote about the suggestion of a mother to have the child visualize the “picture” of a short section, then to keep adding “pictures” to the previous ones until it is time to narrate. All the child needs to do is visualize the pictures in order while he narrates. This seemed to have been just what the doctor ordered. Instead of just being able to remember the end of the section, he is able to actually do a proper narration. Now, I can actually get through a nice section of reading before he narrates.

I think I am going to end of with our recipe. I have significantly modified a recipe I found on the internet to come up with our own delicious whole wheat hamantashen recipe. Hope you enjoy!
Ingredients (for approximately 3 dozen hamantashen):
Dough:
4 cups of whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
¾ cup of brown sugar – gives a better taste than white sugar
4 eggs
1 cup of margarine or oil
Filling:
You can use almost anything for filling from the traditional poppy seeds to pie filling, jam, jelly, preserves, or even chocolate chips!
Instructions:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
The proper thing to do is to mix the dry ingredients together and then add the rest, but I am lazy and I just plop it all in and it works just fine. 🙂
Add more flour if needed to make the dough solid. Roll out the dough and cut into 3-4 inch circles.
Drop a tablespoon of the filling on top of the dough circles. Close and pinch to make 3 sides.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until a nice golden brown.

Wishing everyone a Frelichen Purim!

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