Week 1: God’s Love Frees – The Passover Story (Exodus 1-12)

Story Station Idea

Materials:

• Pillows
• A copy of a Haggada (an adult one, or one for children, such as the one found at https://www.aish.com/h/pes/f/aac/86323047.html)
• Crown for Pharaoh, Staff for Moses
• Plastic flies (locusts)
• Aluminum foil balls (hail)
• Red dot stickers (boils)
• Paper, tape, red paint and brushes

Presentation

Opening:

Welcome the group to your “home” and invite them to sit on pillows around a low table. Explain that part of celebrating Passover is eating a meal together called a Seder and that during the Seder, the story of the very first Passover is told. Show group the Haggada, and turn to the section where the story is retold.

Dig:

Many, many years before Jesus was born, God’s people were enslaved in Egypt. They were treated horribly and God was not pleased. God called Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let God’s people go. (Get volunteers from the group to be God, Moses and Pharaoh. Have them act out the story.)

God: Moses, go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go!
Moses: (to Pharaoh) God says to let my people go!
Pharaoh: No!

Because Pharaoh was being stubborn and not letting God’s people go, God had to convince him. God sent several plagues to Egypt – God turned the water red, made all the Egyptian animals sick, and sent lots of frogs to jump all over the place. After each plague came, Moses went back to the Pharaoh to tell him to let God’s people go.

Allow kids to throw “hail” balls and flies and stick the sticker “boils” on Pharaoh. After each plague -
Moses: Let God’s people go!
Pharaoh: No!

After God had sent 9 different plagues, and Pharaoh was STILL keeping God’s people as his slaves, God knew that God would have to do something drastic. God told Moses what would happen. God told Moses to tell the people to pack to go quickly on a journey. They were to bake some bread without waiting for it to rise, and on a certain night, they were to kill a lamb and roast it. They should take the blood from the lamb and put it on their door post, and this would be the sign that the last plague should not come to that home. The last plague would be for the first born of each and every family in Egypt – even the Pharaoh’s family – would die.

Allow the kids to paint red paint on the (paper covered) doorpost to the room. Encourage them to think about keeping the people they love safe, as the people of God must have thought about during the first Passover. Invite kids to name the people they love, and say a prayer of thanks for their safety. After the prayer, invite Moses to go back to Pharaoh:
Moses: Let God’s people go!
Pharaoh: Go, take them and go!

God kept the Israelite people safe, and Moses led them to freedom. God told Moses, and Moses told God’s people to remember God’s blessings every year by telling the story again and by eating flat bread and lamb. That is why Jewish people, to this day, celebrate Passover with a Seder every year. That is also why Jewish families have a mezuzah on the doorpost of their homes. (Families will make their own mezuzah at another station that night)

“The origins of mezuzah are traced to the Exodus story of when the slaves prepared to escape from Egypt. They marked their doorposts with animal blood to inform the messengers attacking the Egyptian households to “pass over” the living quarters of the slaves involved in the drive for freedom. Today we have moved past the sacrificial system as a religious form for transformation and holiness, now we mark our doorposts with mezuzot (plural of mezuzah), which, when used with threshold consciousness can help “blood” from appearing on the doorposts of our relationships.” (Rabbi Goldie Milgram)

Idea posted by Heather Eaton

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