Especially Easter

It is suprising even to me, but Easter with toddlers CAN be meanginful! I have run across some great tools that make Easter mean much more than candy and the Easter bunny to our little ones. Well, I guess it helps if you don't do the easter bunny at your house (gasp!). It is funny that even though they know that the easter bunny at the store and the one at the egg hunt are just people in costumes, they still get a kick out of them :)

Anyway, I wanted to share some of the fun things we do, because it can be a challenge to get kiddos to pay attention, listen, and interact about serious things. Teaching our kids the gospel is THE most important things we can do for our kids and our toddlers go crazy over these ways that we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ in a special way on Easter.

Play-dough Easter Mountain: This idea came from Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper (this is a GREAT book!) I'll post the recipe later this week. Each day of the week before Easter Sunday you can play out parts of the story of the Holy week with the pipe-cleaner people. Kids are captivated by this...not just my kids but I've done this with other's kids and had the same result. On Good Friday the Jesus figure is placed on the cross and then laid in the grave with the "rock" sealing the entrance. On Saturday we posted "guards" at the sides of the tomb and talked about what the disciples must have been thinking and feeling. On Sunday the kids awake to Jesus "alive" standing victoriously at the top of the hill. Both kids saw the triumphant "Jesus" at separate times that morning and both jumped up and down and shouted with joy! Noel Piper suggests that as long as children are enjoying it (and they really do!) and being somewhat serious this is a great activity, but suggests as soon as it is started to be treated as silly it is time to set this one aside.

The basic mountain with cross stuck in a hole on the top

White one is Jesus (carrying cross), Red ones are Roman soldiers, light brown are disciples

Sunday morning Juliana woke up to find the tomb (a hollowed out part underneath the mountain empty and "Jesus" alive!

Joyful Juliana...about 2 seconds later!

Resurrection Eggs: I first heard of these on the Family Life radio program and found them a few years later at Wallyworld. They are 12 plastic Easter eggs filled each with a charm that signifies part of the story of the gospel. Examples are a silver cup (the last supper, God's wrath), praying hands (Jesus in the garden), and a rock (covering the tomb). These are the eggs we hide in the house for the kids to hunt for on Easter morning. The set of eggs comes with a book that has a little reading for each egg, and you can make it as long or as short as you want. If you would want to do a few eggs a day leading up to Easter you could or keep it really informal and just discuss it with the kids while they play randomly with the eggs. I like unstructured play, so plenty of time was spent just watching the kids have fun opening and closing eggs and asking them questions about what they found. Our kids LOVE these!

Daddy and Evan on Easter morning looking through the Resurrection Eggs in no particular order.