I just stumbled across this page while researching something my aunt just told me. She just gave my daughter a bag of almonds and raisins to celebrate her upcoming first day of school. She told me that it was a tradition from our Jewish ancestors (My grandfather was raised Orthodox, but married a non-Jewish woman so we only have a few small traditions left). She said that it was a tradition to give these small bags to a child when they started Hebrew school so that the fruit of knowledge would be sweet. I'm not sure if this was only our family or if it is a more widespread tradition