Let's start off by saying, I SORELY dislike the commercialization of all holidays involving Christ. I can't bring myself to love Santa nor the Easter Bunny, sorry folks. That's why I am very excited about the way our Easter week is playing out. We started off this week with Geddy saying Easter was "about eggs." Now he knows what it's actually about. :)
I have been inspired by some women in an online bible group that I joined, and I finally got into gear to establish some new Easter traditions for my little family.
This post is mostly for my poor memory! A tradition is not a tradition if you don't do it more than once right? :)
I choose an activity to do each day of this week. These are super simple things that can be carried out without a lot of planning, supplies, or money. Awesome!
Day 1 - Monday: Resurrections Rolls . eatatallies.com/2011/04/resurrection-rolls
Day 2 - Tuesday: Easter Tree. Decorate a branch with homemade ornaments made from magazine pictures. Cut out pictures that remind you of Jesus. This looks super cute sitting on my table!!!
Day 3 - Wednesday: Easter Scavenger Hunt. Made a simple sheet that showed 5 pictures (since my kids don't read): rock (tomb/risen), two sticks (cross), color black (sin), color red (jesus' blood), color green ("growing" in Jesus). Kids had fun looking for rocks and sticks outside. We found a black rock, a red rock, and a weed for the color green.
Day 4 - Thursday: Spring Time Surprise Gift and decorating eggs. I am giving my kids a little sand bucket/shovel and bubbles, but not associating it with Easter or an Easter basket. And I am avoiding all the candy for everyone's sake! For the egg decorating we are going to try drawing on warm eggs with a crayon, and doing mosaic eggs (gluing rice, glitter, etc. on eggs).
>>>UPDATE: I really decided I hate decorating eggs. First, I under boiled my eggs, then half of them cracked because my kids dropped them. I only did this because Geddy asked for it, maybe next year he will forget. He did like drawing on the eggs with crayon!
Day 5 - Friday: "Resurrection Egg" hunt. Plastic eggs filled with objects to tell the Easter story. (donkey, bread, 3 pieces of silver, nail, sponge, spices, linen cloth, stone, empty egg, etc.)
Day 6 - Saturday: Visit a garden/park to pray. Talk about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Day 7 - Sunday: "Grave Clothes" toilet paper wrap. Wrap kids in toilet paper, break free from toilet paper, talk about how sad the disciples were and how happy they must have been to see Jesus alive.
I guess decorating eggs and doing a resurrection "egg hunt," is still pretty traditional! I am just happy that we are reiterating the Easter story over and over again to them this week. And of course I am more than pleased that Mr. Bunny will not be making a debut. (he he he)
4 comments:
This is awesome Tonee!! I have a hard time finding the balance between commercial stuff and what they holiday is really about. I think this sounds great! I think you could be in Trent's family ;). They are super against Santa (I haven't asked them about the Easter Bunny). They all feel like telling your kids there is a Santa is lying to them, and how are they going to believe in Christ when the description of Santa is really close to what the Savior is (we can't see him but he's there, he watches over us and knows if we are good or not...). So Trent told Tru this year that there is no Santa... he's going to be the kid at school that tells all the other kids I'm sure. Anyway, sorry for the long post. I think these are awesome ideas!
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing!
Love this! I need to check blogs more often! I am glad you documented, so that I can come back here next year to remember your fun ideas too! Now, I'm off to update my own blog so I remember the fun we had celebrating Jesus this year too! And to catch up on the study!
I want to be more like you Ton. You are so Christlike.
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