Mishloach Manot is an important part of Purim and I love having my kids 100% involved in creating and delivering our Purim baskets so I hope our Kid-Made Mishloach Manot in 3 Easy Steps helps inspire you to have a simple, fun and meaningful kid-involved Mishloach Manot experience!
Step 1: The Container
You have lots of container choices when it comes to Mishloach Manot. When involving kids, I’ve found the easiest container is … a paper bag! There are numerous ways children can decorate a paper bag. Some of the ideas we’ve tried: individual decorations, crown stencil, and this year, marbled masks.
Paper Bag with Individual Decorations
I love using the super simple brown paper lunch bag both at home and in the classroom. Kids can use crayons, markers, stickers, whatever you have! This is definitely the easiest and least expensive option.
In both the classroom and at home I really love seeing kid-made designs. These may not feel Pinterest-perfect, but to me they are the absolute best–their creativity really shines through!
Paper Bag with Crown Stencil
Last year we made these adorable stencil crown bags with a leftover crown cut out from another craft and clothespin and cotton ball “paintbrushes.” Super easy but especially fun when you use gold glitter paint!
Anything with a stencil helps provide some structure to the decoration but still allows kids to make it themselves, which is always important to me.
Paper Bag with Marbled Masks
This year we made these gorgeous marbled masks and attached them to white paper bags. Love love love them. Check out how we made them here!
I absolutely love these marbled masks because they are bright and fun but once again–kid-made, or at least kid-decorated! If you have older kids they could probably cut out the masks in addition to decorating. I used my Cricut instead of scissors but the kids did the marbling.
Having the kids involved in decorating the Mishloach Manot containers instantly makes them feel part of the Purim basket experience. It’s a craft, an activity, and a mitzvah!
Step 2: The Goodies
Like with the container, the goodies can range to whatever you can imagine–and whatever works for your family. We like to stick to two ready-made items + hamantaschen. The two ready-made items (that require different brachot, or blessings) are what are technically required in the giving of mishloach manot. But many people do what works for them and that’s of course just fine!
I’ve found that dried fruit, raisin boxes, or clementines work well for our family. This allows us to have a representation of the vine or fruit of the tree blessing. And it’s food that tastes good and won’t spoil super easily.
We often also do some kind of snack with nuts, which again is something that tastes good and won’t spoil easily. We’ve made toffee nuts, spiced nuts, and again this year, trail mix.
Can you tell these are items that I usually just have in my pantry or are easy to grab on a regular grocery trip? Yes! That is the key to my master plan: I really want the preparing and giving of Mishloach Manot to feel easy and doable. And the kids can totally help with any of the foods we include in our Purim baskets.
This year the kids helped make the trail mix. They felt super involved and of course it was a very simple activity. So it felt doable and manageable during this busy time (yes, every single day of the year feels busy, gah!).
When I have my students make mishloach manot in class, I usually ask parent volunteers to bring in bags of chips or pretzels, trail mix or raisins. Again, this seems easy to me to do on a larger scale. Everything is already individually wrapped and won’t get damaged from little hands grabbing and putting them into the bags.
Hamantaschen in our family mishloach manot is a must have! And most years I make the same recipe, Sweet and Tart Apricot Hamantaschen, because it’s just my favorite. I’ve experimented a few times in the past, but always come back to this one.
This year I tried two new hacks to make the rolling out of the dough even more kid-friendly! Instead of flattening the dough into discs to refrigerate, I rolled chunks of the dough into logs then chilled. When we were ready to start assembling, I sliced the log and gave each kid a disc. This worked so well! They could flatten the disc with their hand or roll it out. We’ll be trying this hack again!
The other hack involved using a replacement rolling pin. Instead of having to maneuver a large rolling pin and huge section of dough, they were able to use a can of Izze to easily roll out their smaller disc. Warning: this was a FAIL! We started rolling with the Izze can and it burst open on us! Oops! The kids got to drink the Izzes (from a glass) and we switched to a metal reusable water bottle. I do think using the water bottle instead of a bulky rolling pin was much easier for their smaller hands. And only having to deal with a small section of dough worked better too.
Whether we are at home or in the classroom, I set up the Mishloach Manot packing process in an assembly line and the kids go through the line and put one item of each of the foods into their Mishloach Manot container. Super easy and efficient! And, of course, totally kid-involved!
Step 3: The Card
There are of course so many ways to make creative, kid-made mishloach manot cards. Original artwork or copies of the many decorated printouts like the Hamantaschen Lego Prints from this year and the Grogger Process Art printouts from last year would totally work and be a fun and easy option.
But most years I just have the kids color in this super simple mishloach manot card. Many of the people we give mishloach manot to (teachers, friends and neighbors) aren’t Jewish so I always like including a little explanation of the holiday and this tradition. I use these cards in my classroom too when the class makes mishloach manot. It allows for some customization and creativity in the coloring, but explanation and mass production ease as well. And they are small enough to tie or tuck into whatever size mishloach manot you want to give.
I made a larger version without the explanation for the preschool this year. Plenty of room to include your own message and Purim wishes!
I feel like adding a card not only lets the recipient know who dropped off the yummy Mishloach Manot, it is also another way for the kiddos to personalize and truly immerse themselves with really thinking about preparing and giving the Mishloach Manot.
1, 2, 3 Mishloach Manot!
In my opinion, Mishloach Manot should be something that is created with joy and love, not stress and overwhelm. I want my kids fully involved because I want them to not only understand the mitzvah, but to participate in it. Decorating simple containers, filling it with easy food (often found in our pantry!), and adding a card the kids can customize makes our Mishloach Manot experience one that is meaningful, fun, and kid-friendly!
Chag Purim Sameach!
We have a whole page dedicated to Purim, our Purim Hub. Check it out! It includes some of the Purim activities we plan to do this year, as well as the activities we’ve done in previous years.
And don’t forget our Purim Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, a wonderful way to introduce Purim! 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 Purim early learner activities ready at your fingertips, try our Purim Activities Packet for Early Learners! I am so excited about all the Purim-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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