I’m posting our Passover/Pesach preparation and teaching plans to share with friends and family but also to see if anyone else has any suggestions or ideas. They are surely welcome! Much of my writing assumes a certain familiarity with the Passover/Pesach traditions, symbolism, and meanings. If something is unclear or unfamiliar, don’t hesitate to post a comment about it. On my sidebar there are several recommended web sites that would be good places to find more information. I must make clear that none of these ideas are original to me. I need to give the credit to the people at the Biblical Holidays forum and the FFOZ forum as well as to the materials produced by those two organizations. These are where the majority of the ideas below have come from.

We will start our lessons with learning about the plagues. Before and during this plague object lesson we will also focus on cleaning every nook and cranny of our house to remove all leaven. The weeks leading up to Passover/Pesach is a time to clean the house, the van, the truck, etc. Not just a light clean but a serious deep clean - spring cleaning if you will. This is a time to remove all leaven from the house, including all products that include leaven. From dog food to cream of mushroom soup to soda to bread. Anything with leaven, even a little bit, must be cleaned up and removed. The crumbs in the cracks of the wood floor, under the piano and the appliances in the kitchen, etc all must be cleaned up. This symbolizes the hunt and removal of sin from our lives. It is common for leaven to be the representation of sin in Scripture. It is important to search our hearts and ask Him to reveal to us areas of our lives that need to be cleaned up and removed. By Passover/Pesach the house will be leaven free and spotless.

We will demonstrate each plague here at home in the 9 days leading up to Pesach. Each plague begins at sunset because that is when the day begins according to Scripture. At the end of the afternoon the family will clean up what remains from the plague and before dinner we’ll burn what we cleaned up outside. The symbolism here is fourfold: 1) to make us aware of what the Egyptians went through. 2) the direct challenge of their gods by The Holy One Himself. 3) to realize that we, too, have our own Egypt that we’ve been brought out of (a life of sin and being outside of His covenant). 4) the last has to do with the burning of the object lesson materials and the leaven. It correlates to the cleaning of the house, this is to symbolize our cleansing our own tabernacles from sin and not simply putting it in a cupboard (trash can) or storing it outside (garbage can). We need to get rid of it completely and fully so that we can’t go and bring it back into our lives.

Each plague will begin after dinner and will multiply when I wake up in the morning so when the kids wake up, it will have grown quite a bit. At the end of the afternoon, before dinner, we will clean up the plague to symbolize the Holy Ones removal of the plague in Egypt. We’ll focus on the relief that the people must have felt when the plague was lifted and the frantic cleaning and attempt to get back to normal they must have all done once it was over. This is another reminder that we need to be that diligent in cleaning up our lives and removing the sin. It will also be a helpful tool in our preparation cleaning of the house as we’ll be able to focus on one area of the house each day for deep cleaning.

Plague Lessons:

1) Water of the Nile turned to blood. Add red food coloring to everything with water - pitchers, juice, etc. Remove all traces at the end of the day.

2) Frogs. Cut out green shapes and put them everywhere - in beds, on counters, on floors, in dressers, in the food, etc. Burn frog papers at the end of the day.

3) Lice. Hole punch white papers and scatter the small pieces everywhere. Study a little on lice and how gross they are.

4) Flies or Beetles. Hole punch with black paper and scatter them everywhere.

5) Livestock Disease. [I’m not sure how to replicate this one. DH wants to use the paint ball guns to paint the cattle, sheep, and horses (which is what they were used for originally - to mark the cattle out in the fields). I’m not so sure.]

6) Boils. We will use clear tape and put small pieces and larger pieces on each others skin. After a time they itch and get irritating. We will not be allowed to remove them until before dinner.

7) Hail and lightning. [I’m not sure how to replicate these either.]

8) Locust. Brown larger than hole punch size papers all over, in the food, etc. Somehow we’ll symbolize the loss of the food, or maybe we’ll just talk about the severity of loss of food at the livestock disease, hail, and locust plagues.

9) Darkness. Cover all the windows somehow and remove light bulbs from fixtures or simply tape over the switches so the lights cannot be turned on. We have a lot of large windows so there isn’t any way to block out the light completely. We will still be able to function in the house but it’ll just be darker than usual.

10) Death. We will not die. :) We will use red construction paper and DH will “paint” it around our front door and blue paper on both sides of the door leading to either the dining room or the living room to represent the Sea of Suf which was parted, the symbolism of the mikvah or baptism. He will do this in the afternoon, before our Passover meal. We will have our meal/Seder together and keep the papers on the door frames till the end of the Festival of Matzah/Unleavened Bread.

On the Eve of Pesach DH will take the family on a search for any left over leaven we have missed. He will search through the house with the family in tow to inspect that every piece of leaven has been removed. He will use a candle (or maybe a flashlight) to search out even the dark corners and a feather to brush away what traces may remain. This is like what the Spirit does in our hearts - He shines the light in even the dark places of our lives to clean out any hidden thing we might need to get rid of but may have overlooked or neglected to get rid of. I will hide some pieces of bread in odd places for him to find and once he’s searched the house we will take these pieces of bread out into the driveway and burn them like we did with our plague object lessons. Along with the leaven we will have already written down areas of sin in our lives that we need to get rid of and throw those papers into the fire. This will be before our meal together, before we enter the house under the blood (red construction paper) that is ‘painted’ around our door frame. It will be at this point that we will no longer be Egyptians but Hebrews because of our faith in Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) has allowed us to be grafted into the vine.

We may read the story of Moses/Moshe leading the people out of Egypt and the first Pesach outside as a group, weather permitting. After this, we will enter under the blood and then pass through the sea (blue construction paper) and into the living room. We may consider washing each others feet as Yeshua did for His disciples, before we eat of course, if time allows.

We will use a Haggadah listed here about half way down the page. We’ll try not to be as slow as in years past (we learn so much and have so much fun, last year it was past midnight before we finished our meal). :) I purchased the above Haggadah at the local Christian bookstore last year but there is another Haggadah that I’d really like to get my hands on as well, this one.

After the meal and we’ll have the Afikomen search by the kids (have candies as rewards for questions and who finds the afikomen). This is a neat part of the meal, where 1/2 of the broken piece of Matzah (when Yeshua said, “This is My body broken for you”) is hidden. The child who finds the hidden 1/2 brings it to the father of the house to redeem the piece for a piece of candy or some coins.

Have our Counting of the Omer chart displayed and sheafs ready to be applied to each day posted somewhere in the kitchen or living room. Personally, reading Psalm 119 daily is a highlight of the year for me. Being able to sit out on the porch in my chair and read before the kids wake up, watching the sunrise and hearing the birds - it is an amazing time of worship for me and I look forward to those times all year long. There’s something special about those 49 days and thinking that this is what Yeshua did with His disciples all those years ago before He ascended.

This will take us into Pentecost/Shavuot. :~)

Posted by Jeannine

Hi Lisa, I have found this posting very interesting - you are making a lot of effort to make this real for your family! Regarding the hail and lightening...hmm...I often think that the worst part of these types of storms is the noise. I do have some "sound effects" CDs that you could record from. If you continuously played the sounds of a thunder storm, that could be effective. Just a thought. If you want to borrow the CDs, just let me know.

Blessings to you and your family as you continue to seek Him,
Jeannine

Posted by Proverbsch22v6Homeschool

thank you for these posts. I am printing them out to keep for future reference - credited to you of course!