When the great crowd that had come to the feast heard
that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem,
they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out:
“Hosanna!
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,
the king of Israel.”
- John 12: 12-13
My original plan for this date was to show the children how to do palm crosses since it was Palm Sunday, but I eventually had my misgivings. I’ve done origami with the children before, and unless it is very simple, they usually needed help. I also needed an activity that would keep the children occupied for the (lengthy) Palm Sunday reading. I happened to be in the library and found this book:
and I thought to myself, you know, Passover is a really important part of the Easter story, but I really know very little about it. I know what it celebrates, but I didn’t know what happens during a Seder. So I decided to discuss Passover instead. I bought some matzo from the local Jewish deli and printed out this page:
http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/color-seder-plate/
Before I started reading, I handed out the sheets so that the children could follow along with the story. I read the book to the children, though I did skip the bit about Moses being hidden in the rushes because all the first-born boys were killed. There was one younger boy (about three years old) in the group and I was a bit anxious of how he would react to that part of the story.
When we discussed the breaking of matzo and the drinking of the wine, we discussed how we do something very similar at every Mass and that the Last Supper, which our Mass is based on, was a Passover meal, and so it was not surprising that this would sound familiar to us.
After that, I let the children try the matzo. “It tastes like crackers!” was the general response.
The children coloured the colouring page after they finished. While the story was lengthy and the colouring pages took time, there was still a lot of Mass time left, so we probably could have done a little more that day.
Image courtesy of:http://www.amazon.com/Passover-Celebrating-Now-Remembering-Then/dp/B004R96TXW
Before I started reading, I handed out the sheets so that the children could follow along with the story. I read the book to the children, though I did skip the bit about Moses being hidden in the rushes because all the first-born boys were killed. There was one younger boy (about three years old) in the group and I was a bit anxious of how he would react to that part of the story.
When we discussed the breaking of matzo and the drinking of the wine, we discussed how we do something very similar at every Mass and that the Last Supper, which our Mass is based on, was a Passover meal, and so it was not surprising that this would sound familiar to us.
After that, I let the children try the matzo. “It tastes like crackers!” was the general response.
The children coloured the colouring page after they finished. While the story was lengthy and the colouring pages took time, there was still a lot of Mass time left, so we probably could have done a little more that day.
Image courtesy of:http://www.amazon.com/Passover-Celebrating-Now-Remembering-Then/dp/B004R96TXW