Very soon, we will be celebrating Purim, a favorite holiday for children and adults alike. At Beit Issie Shapiro we are already busy getting into the holiday spirit planning costumes and incorporating holiday words and concepts into our daily activities.
For the last few years we have been hosting a costume make-a thon. It has been a huge success in the community, bringing design student volunteers, from the Holon Institute of Technology, together with children who use wheelchairs or walkers and their families. Together the teams create costumes that incorporate the wheelchair or walker into the design so that the devices become part of the costume rather than hide it. Last week, we hosted the initial meeting. The room was a buzz of excitement and activity as teams discussed ideas, took measurements and designs began to take shape. Meanwhile, the volunteers are creating the costumes and will meet the families again in the final event where they will add finishing touches and the children will display their costumes in a final ceremony. It is sure to be an exciting and emotional event.
Photos from last year’s event
There’s still time to organize your own community event…. we recommend it whole-heartedly!
Purim in the Classroom
In the classrooms at our Early Intervention Center and at the Special Education School, we are busy with Purim activities as well, and our therapists and teachers are busy creating interactive activities to reinforce the concepts related to Purim.
Here is a lesson I made, using Ji Tap, to work on word recognition and phonemic awareness. Click on the images to see the game on Ji Tap’s website.
Ji Tap has lots of great interactive activities for Purim that you can play on your app or on their website. You can also use the app to make Purim cards for mishloach manot or to dress up personal photos. They have great Purim-themed creation packs with a variety of backgrounds and stickers.
Made using Ji Tap
Here are a few more ideas of things we have written about in past Purim posts:
The staff of the Early Intervention Center created a communication board to support participation in holiday preparations and events. The boards were created using Touch Chat and whoever has the app can download and use the boards, and of course adjust or adapt them to the user’s needs.
Purim board
In the main board, you will find boards for two levels of communication, holiday custom riddles, an activity to create a clown, and a costume board. For the costume board it is recommended that you personalize the board with costumes from the children in your class. To download the board, click here. Look at the picture below for further instruction.
To download the board, click on the link, and then click on the “download” button (circled in red).
Another great activity is to use photo editing apps to dress up your photos and try on different virtual costumes.
Mojo Masks
MSQRD
Mojo Masks and MSQRD add face makeup to your photos. The makeup fits perfectly on the face in the photo and stays on the face as the face moves, allowing you to even record short videos, which always makes for a few laughs. The free versions includes a few fun samples but there are many in-app purchases to choose from.
Classroom tip: If you have access to an Apple TV, you can create an album of funny photos and have the kids enjoy a slideshow. They can even try to guess who is hiding under all those fun stickers. Make sure to take a screenshot of the accessory page in each app to help create symbols or choice boards for children that need some extra help to choose what they would like on their photo.
Let us know how you are using technology to in your Purim activities!
Happy Purim!!
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