One of the many songs his teacher taught this year was "the months of the year". A good basic song, one that everyone should know. And he sings it alot. So I showed him how when I used to teach preschool and sing this song, all the kids would sit in a circle and we would sing "January, February, March and April, May, June, July and August, September, October, November, December, these are the months of the year" and when the song got to your birthday month, you would jump up - and he really liked that part.
The other day he started singing the same tune with different words - the ten makot or plagues - like this, "Dam, Tzfardeya, Kinim, Arov, Dever, Shchin, Barad, Arbeh, Choshech, Makaat BeChooorrot, these are the teeeen Maaakot". The words mostly fit, you just kind of have to play around with the syllables. Maybe practice a little before the seder.
And smart little guy that he is, he wanted to know how each person singing his new song (and by the afternoon of day one, we were all singing it) would know when to jump. So we made a game and a game needs pieces to be played. So we made pieces too. We created a necklace for each plague. The necklaces will be placed under random plates at the table - we will be having about 15 people at the seder, so not everyone will get one but I think that several of the adults will be okay with that. When it's time to play the game, we all (hopefully) will sing the song, and when we get to "your" plague, you jump up from your seat. And now that I think about it, after we do it once, everyone can pass their plague to the right and we can play again - and everyone will get to have a turn. Maybe even two turns. Ooh.
- Dam (Blood): a drawing of a cup with red liquid inside
- Tzfardeya (Frogs): Lucky us, we had frog stickers
- Kinim (Lice): Lucky us again, we had firefly in a jar stickers that can pass for lice
- Arov (Wild Animals): We're on a roll! We had a sticker book filled with dinosaurs and weird monsters. Close enough.
- Dever (Sadly, those wild animals are no longer with us): Not one to draw dead animals, I drew upside down ones. A cow and an elephant. I'm not sure why.
- Shechin (Boils): So gross. I drew small circles and colored them in yellow and green.
- Barad (Hail - and Fire): I drew pictures of orange balls of hail and red and orange fire
- Arbeh (Locusts): We had some grasshopper stickers
- Choshech (Darkness): Sunglasses stickers
- Makat Bechorot (Death of the Firstborn Son): Again, not one for depicting death on a child's game, I drew a picture of the Jewish doorways in Egypt, with a mezuzah on each one.