It feels strange to celebrate any holiday since October 7th but once again, I try to remember that Jews have persevered throughout history because we have continued to celebrate our holidays and traditions and I hope that by engaging my children (and you!) in experiences such as our 2024 Passover Shelfie + Starter Activities, continued learning, exploration, reflection, and Jewish pride and joy will continue in our family and greater community.
What You’ll Need
- Your favorite Passover books (check out our recommendations here!)
- Your favorite Passover arts, crafts, toy sets, and activities that you already own and/or look below to see if any of ours inspire you to create similar ones!
Putting It Together
Here is the list of activities that I set up. Get inspired or grab whatever of your own! I also plan to add new activities to this Passover Shelfie as we create them.
- Woven Pyramid
- Baby Moses and the Reeds Posting Bin
- Sort The 10 Plagues
- Crossing the Red Sea Sensory Bag
- Paper Plate Miriam’s Timbrel
- Seder Plate Match
- Seder Table Match Worksheet
- Passover Book Box + Reading Challenge Bingo
- Matzah Rubbing
- Passover Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards
- Passover Seder Nomenclature Cards
- Passover Story Sequencing
- Passover Symbol Memory Game
- Haggadot, etc.
Finished & Loving It!
This year I kind of themed each shelf of our Shelfie: bottom shelf is the Story of Passover, middle shelf is the Seder and matzah and the top shelf is our cards about the holiday.
Woven Pyramid
We start the Passover story by exploring the Israelites as slaves in Egypt. To encourage discussion about the hard manual labor the Israelite slaves would have had to do, we made little woven pyramids. Weaving is a great fine motor, concentration, and coordination practice.
The pyramids are very easy to make. Use a glue gun and either wooden dowels or popsicle sticks to create the pyramid frame. This is what I set on a tray on the shelf along with basting ribbon. The basting ribbon is from a box of sewing items my Grandma recently gave me and I have no idea what to do with so of course they end up in our crafts! Invite your child to use the basting ribbon, yarn, or regular ribbon and weave over and under the dowels or popsicle sticks to create their woven pyramids!
I was not stingy when I came to how much glue gun I used to secure the popsicle sticks into their pyramid shape. This is still not a sturdy structure so remind your kiddos to be gentle when weaving and handling the pyramid. It’s okay if it breaks (just re-glue or tape!) and it’s also okay to give them opportunities for working and manipulating fragile items and understanding what their bodies need to do to compensate for that fragility.
Baby Moses and the Reeds Posting Bin
I made this sweet Baby Moses and the Reeds Posting Bin years ago and brought it out again this year to represent the part of the Passover story for when Moses is a baby and his mother sends him down the Nile. It was on our Shelfie last year too but here is a sign that it’s totally ok to reuse activities that work for your family! The kids enjoyed it again this year and it served its purpose as telling this part of the Passover story as well as being a fun way to practice skill development.
This posting bin is easy to make and is such a wonderful hands on way for the kids to practice some fine motor skills while engaging in some imaginary play.
See the full how-to about this sensory bin from our original post here.
Sort The 10 Plagues
This is a wonderful simple sorting activity that’s great as a cognitive skills and fine motor activity while reviewing the 10 plagues. I had figurines for all the 10 plagues in a basket then a tray with a sheet of paper separating out the 10 plagues. Handwritten, nothing fancy!
Each rectangle had the plague number and name on it to practice those early reading and word exposure skills. The children were invited to look through the figurine tray and sort out the figurines into the correct plague grouping.
My youngest is pre-reading but having him look at the numbers and words as I read them to him is so important: it’s exposing him to their shape and will help him learn to identify them. Using pictures is also a great pre-reading option. In fact, you could totally use our 10 Plagues Counting Cards as the sorting identifiers 😉 These cards are available for free, click here!
Crossing the Red Sea Sensory Bag
I love this Crossing the Red Sea Sensory Bag because it’s easy to make and is such a great pre-writing practice: just trace the line! When the kiddo’s pointer finger presses down hard enough on the line it separates the sensory filler and thus splits the Red Sea!
To make the Crossing the Red Sea Sensory Bag, draw a thick wavy line on a gallon size ziplock bag using a sharpie. Then squirt foaming shaving cream mixed with blue food coloring into the ziplock bag. Close and tape to make it extra secure.
I had trouble getting all the air out of this sensory bag as I did not want the shaving cream to push out as I pushed out the air. But it does lead to a really fun and squishy sensory experience, even with the extra air in the bag.
You could easily use blue hair gel for the filler for this sensory bag as well. Or do both and let your kids experience both types of tactile feedback!
Paper Plate Miriam’s Timbrel
This version of a Paper Plate Miriam’s Timbrel encourages fine motor practice and doesn’t contain any fillers like beans.
Hole punch around the perimeter of a paper plate. Tie yarn or embroidery thread (depending on the size of your jingle bells) through one of the holes. Invite your child to add a jingle bell to their thread then thread through the next hole and so forth until all holes have been threaded. Tie off at the end then shake shake shake and sing about our freedom!
Coloring or otherwise decorating the paper plates is a wonderful option too. As is playing Debbie Friedman’s Miriam’s Song in the background, one of my favorites.
Pro tip: Buy the big bells!! I used the mini bells leftover from last year’s Miriam’s Timbrel invitation and they are just so tiny. Way too hard for the kids to thread themselves. The kids were still able to thread through the punched holes, just not the bells too. Poo.
Seder Plate Match
One of my all time favorite Passover crafts that we’ve made are these gorgeous DIY Wooden Seder Plates so of course I always like to include them on our Seder table and our Passover Shelfies.
This year instead of just using them as beautiful decorations, I decided to incorporate them into a matching activity. I made the same size circles for each of the ritual Seder foods on the plate and wrote the Hebrew name on the circles. I invited the kids to match the Hebrew names with the English.
This is such a simple way for the kids to learn and review the Hebrew for these ritual foods, as well as review which foods are on the Seder plate.
Learn how to make our DIY Wooden Seder Plates here.
Seder Table Match Worksheet
For a little added Seder practice, I made this free printable that shares the symbolism of each ritual item on the Seder table. The first page gives the images and explanations all together for beginner learning. The second page scrambles them up and offers an invitation to match the image with the correct explanation. If you are working with younger children you can read the explanations and they can point or practice drawing a line connecting the correct pair.
Print your free copy here!
Passover Book Box + Reading Challenge Bingo
Each year we gather all our Passover books into our beautiful kid-made Passover Book Box so they will be easy to find as we prepare for the holiday.
Check out our free Passover Reading Challenge Bingo printable for some extra fun while reading your favorite Passover books!
Matzah Rubbing
These matzah rubbings are so great! Grab a Lego sheet, brown crayons and some white or beige or pale yellow paper squares. Invite your child to place the paper on the Lego sheet then rub with the brown crayon to create little matzah bumps. So fun!
We are of course saving our matzah for future crafts 🙂
Passover Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards
Our Passover 3 Part Cards are a wonderful way to introduce and/or review the history, traditions, symbols and customs of the holiday.
We use these cards each year and the repetition is not only okay, it’s great for the kids to continue reviewing so that this learning about the holiday really becomes embedded.
The youngest one loves matching the pictures while the older ones can now read the summary cards themselves to complete the matching.
The Passover Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards are available on their own here or as part of the Passover Activities Packet for Early Learners.
Passover Seder Nomenclature Cards
These Passover Nomenclature Cards focus just on the Seder. These were so great to use before we did the Seder activity on the shelf. They are a simple way to give exposure to and learn how to identify the special items used during the Seder.
The Passover Nomenclature Cards are available on their own here or as part of the Passover Activities Packet for Early Learners.
Passover Story Sequencing
Yes, more cards! An entire shelf of them haha. It may seem like a lot but all these cards are such easy ways to learn more about the holiday and specific parts of the holiday.
We of course used the Passover Story Sequencing cards to tell the Passover story. It was a great review before we explored the supplemental activities on the bottom shelf all about parts of the Passover story.
I laminated and added velcro to these Passover Story Sequencing cards to make them felt board story cards. For today’s exploration, I brought the tray of cards off the shelf and the kids helped set up the cards in the correct order on our large felt board.
These cards are such a great way to practice sequencing and understanding the correct order of a story (what comes in the beginning, middle and end, which parts of the story come before or after others). I also love that the kids can look at the pictures on the cards and know which part of the story the card describes. They can become the storytellers and tell the story in their own words.
The Passover Story Sequencing cards are available on their own here or as part of the Passover Activities Packet for Early Learners.
Passover Symbol Memory Game
My kids really enjoy memory games. They are of course a great practice for concentration and memory skill development. But when you theme them, they are also a fun way of exposing children to that learning focus.
These cards are great for the kids to visually see various Passover symbols. They are available as part of the Passover Activities Packet for Early Learners.
Haggadot, Etc.
On our top shelf I also included the Haggadot we use during our seders: PJ Library, Hug-It-Out, and LeeLaaLou’s Haggadah Companion. I love letting them explore these books even when it’s not actually a seder. Not only does it make them more familiar with the guides when we use them during the seder, they also can spend more time looking at the pictures, reading about things we skip over during the seder, or just reviewing it at their own time and pace. They are becoming more comfortable with the Haggadot each time they use them which is wonderful!
Getting in the mood …
This year Passover starts sundown Monday, April 22nd and ends at sundown Tuesday, April 30th. For me, I want our family to be proud Jewish storytellers, to be able to tell the Passover story and to engage with it historically and with its themes for our future. Whatever Passover looks like for you, I hope you have a meaningful experience and beautiful connection with your family.
I hope you found some inspiration from our 2024 Passover Shelfie + Starter Activities for beginning your Passover 2024 adventures! Continue with us, either here and/or on Instagram, as we explore the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt, how we celebrate our freedom with a seder and all the bits in between!
Chag Passover Sameach!
We have a whole page dedicated to Passover, our Passover Hub. Check it out! It includes some of the Passover activities we plan to do this year, as well as the activities we’ve done in previous years.
And don’t forget our Passover Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, a wonderful way to introduce Passover! And, now we also have all 13 Jewish holidays bundled together in A Year of Jewish Holidays 3 Part Cards.
If you want to have a ton of Passover early learner activities ready at your fingertips, try our Passover Activities Packet for Early Learners! I am so excited about all the Passover-themed literacy, fine motor skills, math, and play fun!
The following sites are amazing resources for learning more about this holiday:
Chag Sameach!
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