Make Your Own Haggadah Scrolls

The Haggadah is a special book that Jews read together the first night of Passover. The word Haggadah means "telling" in Hebrew, and the book is called that because the Haggadah tells the story of the Jews' release from slavery in Egypt. The Haggadah contains prayers, readings from the Torah (the Old Testament), songs and commentary about the story.

My kids are fascinated by our Haggadah scroll, so it didn’t take a creative genius to figure out that they’d enjoy making their own Passover scrolls. This is a great opportunity for older kids to practice handwriting, but it’s also a surprisingly effective way to get them to think about the meaning behind the holiday. Plus, if your Seder celebration has never included a song-and-dance number called “Shake, Rattle and Scroll,” you are definitely missing out. (If the thought makes you shudder, omit the dry rice.)

What You Need:

• Empty toilet paper tubes
• Old plastic bag
• Colorful paper
• Dry rice
• Plain paper (we pull it from our brown Kraft paper rolls so we can make longer scrolls, but you could easily paste two or more plain pieces together)
• Markers, crayons and other writing instruments

What You Do:

1. Let your kids start by decorating their scroll. I encourage my kids to think about what Seder means and what the most important parts of it are and incorporating that into their scrolls, but I try not to give too much direction.
2. Once they’re done with the scrolls, cut out several layers of plastic bag and use them to cover one end of the scroll. Secure with glue or tape. Pour in a scant handful of rice, and seal the same end with the same plastic bag treatment. Do this for both tubes.
3. Now, cover the whole scroll with colorful paper. There are plenty of ways to do this: The easiest, for me, has been to wrap the cylinder in paper and cut out two circles to paste over the ends. Do this for both tubes.
4. Glue one end of the scroll to one of the paper tubes; let dry. Carefully, roll the paper around the tube and glue to remaining end to the other tube, so that it’s rolled like a scroll.