I don’t know about you but I’m tired of bunny and Easter egg crafts! They get old. Apart from which, if you’re like me, it would be nice to find more than the odd idea on how to make Jesus’ death and resurrection the centre of Easter rather than just a story tacked on at the end of all the crafts, chocolate eggs and white rabbits.
So here are a few ideas for the coming week as we prepare our children to celebrate the reason we are Christians. It’s important to make sure that the focus is not on Cottontail but on Christ!
(Click on the the title to go to the links.)
- Crisscross egg box strips into the shape of a cross and paint.
- Make a cross out of tongue depressors and decorate.
- Mark a cross of a piece of white card with masking tape and get the kids to cover the card with paint. Remove the masking tape and you’ll be left with a white cross.
- Draw or cut out an outline of a cross and collage with bits of magazine or coloured paper.
- Use an earbud and food colouring to decorate a cross shape.
The possibilities are endless.
I have a fond memory of doing this several times. Use a tray and cover it in mud and moss. Place a cup on the tray on its side and cover that with rocks, mud and moss to make the tomb. Find a big rock to cover the entrance. You can make three crosses by using two sticks per cross and bind them together with twine and set them on top of the hill (cup). On Friday night, close the tomb and put little tea lights in the garden and light them. Talk about the night Jesus was arrested by torchlight, how He was tried and then crucified. Speak about how He was buried in Joseph’s tomb. Before the kids wake up on Easter Sunday, move the stone and at breakfast, discuss how the women went early on Sunday morning and found the tomb empty!
Jesus, Me and Sin (Science Experiment)
You will need three glasses (preferably exactly the same size and shape). Fill one glass halfway with water. To another add half a glass of household bleach. Label the water one with your child’s name and a picture of a heart. Label the other with Jesus and a picture of a cross. Start by explaining that Jesus is perfect – drop a drop of food colouring into the bleach and explain that He can do nothing wrong. Then ask if we do things that are wrong. Get your child to name some of his/her sins. For each one, put a drop of food colouring in the glass of water. Do three or four. Talk about how sin makes our hearts dirty. We are not clean anymore. Then ask the children how we can become clean again. Talk about how God had a plan. Instead of us dying, He sent Jesus to die so that we could go and be with a perfect God in a perfect place called heaven. So Jesus took all of our sin on Himself. He died and made us clean when He died in our place. Pour the bleach into the glass of coloured water. Say a prayer asking God to forgive us and then thank Him for His sacrifice. By the time you have finished praying, the coloured water will be clean.
I LOVE these. They were first introduced to me by a friend. I didn’t actually taste one but was so fascinated by the fact that there was masking tape across her stove that I had to ask. They are like a meringue. Basically each ingredient represents part of the Easter story. The nuts are beaten with a rolling pin to depict how Jesus’ body was broken for us. The salt represents the tears cried by the women watching. The vinegar represents the wine mixed with vinegar that Jesus was offered to drink. The beaten egg whites could represent Jesus’ purity and the sugar represents the sweetness of our salvation. We will make them on Good Friday and seal the “tomb” (oven) for three days. They should be hollow (although I have seldom got this right!) and this represents the tomb being empty!
It’s great and definitely an awesome way to get the Easter story into children’s heads!
Oh my word, I love them! So this year I am going to try and make them. I will speak about the Easter story as we make them, chatting to my daughter about the roll shape like the rock that covered the entrance to the tomb. And then obviously the cross on top representing the cross on which Jesus died. Then we will definitely eat them hot with LOTS of lovely slices of butter! (I hope I link a good recipe! This is the one I’m trying – but without the fruit and the peel – just raisins. Let me know how it works for you!)
This is something I remember doing with such fondness at church a few days before we started dating (I was actually paying attention even though he held my hand for the first time that night!) It just made so much sense! I think that this is such a lovely way of linking the Old Testament and the New Testament at Easter time. I have never done it with my own children but we are going to do a simplified and not quite correct version this year (the shops have no horseradish and we’re having roast beef because that’s what we have in our freezer and it’s lockdown). But I found a lovely PDF version. I’d also read Exodus 12 ahead in your Bible so you can make links between the first Passover and the Christ.
I’ve never tried this one before, but I’m quite keen. We’ll have to improvise, being in lockdown and all. No dashing out to the shops to get plastic eggs and plastic donkeys! We’ll see what we can muster together with what we have! But I’m all for not spending money! What we’ll do (since I didn’t get my act together in time!!) is I’ll add these “eggs” to our hunt on Easter Sunday and we’ll tell the story while noshing on some chocolate eggs. At least I know my daughter will sit still long enough to listen 🙂
I literally put “Christian Easter Ideas” for Kids into a Pinterest search and this was the result! Here are some ways to keep your kids’ focus on Christ this week in preparation for Easter. And, bonus, you don’t have to Google ideas to keep your kiddies entertained for Week 2 in lockdown!
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