Over 150 people attended a Makot Fair, a children’s pre-Pesach educational workshop with age-appropriate programming for children 18 months through age 7 on Sunday afternoon, March 30, at Congregation Ohav Emeth (OE) in Highland Park. The event was co-sponsored by OE and Yeshivat Netivot Montessori of East Brunswick. Through storytelling and sensory play, children (and their accompanying adults) learned about the 10 plagues that precipitated the exodus from Egypt by participating in various innovative learning stations that represented each of the plagues.

Leah Kotowitz, program director at Netivot, said, “We wanted to engage the community at large in the multi-sensory, hands-on learning tools that engage the children and are similar to the activities that we use in our school.” Morah Miryam Gordon, upper elementary director at Netivot and one of the youth directors at OE, was able to arrange the presentation where “We are happy to see children with connections to Netivot and/or OE as well as children from the community at large get excited about the programming and eager for the holiday to begin.”

Deborah Melman is a staff writer at The Jewish Link.