Edot: Purim Carnival Fun at Isaiah

Yesterday morning we did our very best - first in our Edot classroom and then with the rest of the school up in the Sanctuary and Social Hall - to create as wild and wacky an atmosphere as we could to welcome in Purim. The holiday itself begins on Wednesday evening, but our annual LAFTY Purim Carnival definitely primed us for Wednesday evening's ultimate Purim Madness.

First, we played "In the Manner of the Word" in our classroom. It's a game totally dependent upon volunteers willing to act out certain sentences in the "manner of the word." "The Word" in this case, is an adverb. We started the game by having the students review the major events of the Purim story in sentence form. I wrote ten of the sentences on the board. Then the students called out adverbs and I wrote 14 of them on the board. A volunteer was asked to leave the classroom, with a "gatekeeper" watching the door and letting in the volunteer once another volunteer had chosen one of the adverbs. Once the first volunteer came back into the classroom, he or she chose another volunteer to act out one of the sentences "in the manner of the word," and had to try to guess what "the word" was. A lot of funny and crazy situations arise when you can't use words or props to act out the assigned sentence!

Gatekeeper Shaina guards the classroom door

Volunteer Ian chooses one of the adverbs

There was no shortage of volunteers for this game!

Queen Vashti refuses to appear only in her crown for the king's feast - weirdly???

Haman advising the King to kill all the Jews - superstupidly???

Queen Esther inviting the King to a feast - madly???

We were all definitely in a wacky mood by the time our class time was over, and we went upstairs to the Sanctuary to join the rest of the school for the Purimshpiel and Parade.