Celebrating the spring feasts is something that our children are going to grow up with. They are going to be the first generation to fully know the Lord’s holy days.
Both my husband and I grew up doing all the traditional holidays. But after coming to this faith we had to figure out how we are going to celebrate the Lord’s feasts and what that will look like for our family. And to be honest we are still on this journey. We are new to parenting with our boys and are still figuring out what Shabbat and the feast days look like for us.
But I think that’s one of the beauties of following the Lord’s ways. It’s coming back to the His desires and discovering how following Him will look like for each individual family.
One thing that both my husband and I want for our children though is for them to look forward to the Lord’s feast.
We want to instill in them the joy and importance of each of the feasts, even from an early age.
So I want to share some things with you that we are doing now to help our little ones be engaged in the spring feasts.
Our oldest is only three. So these are very simple. And a few of these things we will be incorporating more in the years to come.
I am so excited to bring more memories in as our littles ones grow and I can’t wait to establish the love for the Lord and His feast days into the next generation!
Let them help you remove the leaven.
When you clean out the leaven in your home before Passover, allow your little ones to help.
As you are removing things from your cabinets and cleaning all the corners, have your children do it too. And use this time as an opportunity to tell them why we are supposed to and show them in the Bible where God commands us too. As you explain, relate it to our everyday sins. You can make this as fun or explanatory as you need to depending on how old your children are.
Have them help make matzah.
As you are preparing your unleavened bread, have them help roll out the dough and cook them on the pan. Or if you are using store bought matzah (which there is nothing wrong with!) let them arrange it on the plate.
Then explain to them how this bread is different and that you will be eating this all week because God commanded you to do so.
Make the Passover meal fun for your child’s age.
This is the most fun part for me. I love thinking up ways to keep my boys engaged.
This is a list of things we used on our table last year. I have everything from glassware to toy puppets on there.
Share a part of the Exodus story each morning.
At breakfast each morning have a time of storytelling. You can use puppets, pictures, sounds, or anything you would like to make this time fun. Start at the beginning of the Exodus story and continue telling the story of the Israelites journey to Mount Sinai each morning during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Set aside time for crafts.
There are so many great craft ideas that you can find online that you can do with your little ones during Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. You can even set up a display of Egypt with your kids’ toys and act out each of the ten plagues. Add red dye (or cranberry juice if you are a natural mama like me) to a tray of water. Throw in some tiny kosher marshmallows for hail. Have their animal toys fall down. And so on. Make this week fun!
Count the omer with them.
Have a time each day after First Fruits to count the omer together as a family. And have your children take turns opening, scratching off, circling, or doing however your omer calendar is set up each day.
Hopefully these few ideas help get your started to making the spring feasts fun for your whole family!
If you want to learn more about the Lord’s appointed feasts and what each mean I’ll leave a video below that gives a short summary of each.
