Passover Pictures

What You Need:

• Construction paper
• Oil pastels
• Pencil
• Contact paper (optional)

What You Do:

1. Ask your child to identify the six items that appear on the Seder plate. Make sure he understands what they symbolize.

• Beitzah is a hardboiled egg, which is the festival sacrifice
• Maror and Chazeret are bitter herbs to remember the bitterness and harshness that Jews suffered while being slaves of Egypt
• Karpas is usually parsley and is thought to represent the spring, when Passover is celebrated. The karpas is dipped in salt water to start the ceremony. Some say the salt water represents tears. The area in the center of the plate is for the salt water.
• Charoset is a brown paste of fruits, nuts and red wine. It's usually sweet and is symbolic of the mortar used by the Jewish slaves who built the storehouses in Egypt.
• Zeroa is a bone, usually from a roasted lamb, or goat. It symbolizes the lamb offered in the Temple in Jerusalem eaten on Seder night.

2. Encourage him to begin by drawing a small circle in the center of the paper with a pencil. This circle represents the small bowl that contains the salt water.
3. Ask him to draw five circles of equal size around the bowl of water. These will be the dishes that hold the food items. He can now draw the food items in the dishes using the pencil.
4. Have him color in all of the food and dishes using oil pastels. The harder he presses down on the pastels while coloring, the more vivid and beautiful the picture will be.
5. Encourage him to decorate the edges of the picture.
6. Now he's ready to explain to the guests at his Seder the meaning behind each of the items on the Seder plate.

To create a placemat that can be used for the next several years, use contact paper or bring the finished drawing to a copy shop and ask to have it laminated.