Ideas for a Meaningful Passover Seder at Any Age

April 10, 2023 | Shabbat and Holidays

By Brenda Footer

Each year during the Passover Seder, we tell the story of our Exodus from Egypt.  It’s a pretty exciting story – a daring escape from slavery to freedom – but many of us struggle to find meaning in this yearly repetition.  The amazing thing about Passover is that there is so much room for creativity and making the seder our own at any age!

• Young children learn best by doing, feeling, and exploring. A sensory bin, like this one from Jewish Moms and Crafters, is a great way to involve little ones in telling the story.  Other great additions include babies in baskets (for baby Moses), sand and blocks (for building Egyptian storehouses), and water to splash in (for splitting the Red Sea).
• Older kids will love being involved in creating the seder. Try bringing them into the kitchen to help with meal prep, learn family recipes, or maybe create something of their own.  This can be a great inter-generational activity, passing down Bubbe’s charoset recipe or no-fail matzah ball soup. The book Let My Children Cook has some fun new Passover recipes just for kids to create.
• If you’re looking for a way to refresh your seder for the adults in the room, try a new haggadah. Haggadot.com is a free resource that has lots of interesting choices, from a Schitt’s Creek haggadah to more traditional fare. The site also has templates that will walk you through creating your own haggadah.
• At some point during the seder, everyone starts to wonder “When do we eat?” Matan, an organization whose mission statement is to “guide, train, and support Jewish community leaders and educators to provide purposeful, enriching, and inclusive opportunities for people with disabilities and their families” offers two visual schedules of the order of the seder that can help kids of any age, those with disabilities and everyone else predict what is coming next.