Thursday, March 10, 2011

Easter and Lent Children's Activities

Creating family memories, especially around holidays, is a major part of a mom's job description.  That's why I'm spending time this week planning a few activities, decorations and meals to help my family remember our Easter celebration.
 
These are a few of the resources I'm using as I plan for the next 40 days:



Lenten Calendar for Kids by Catholic Icing

I found this great countdown calendar at Catholic Icing.  I really like the way it looks like a game board and that you are sort of traveling on a journey to Easter.

You can print the PDF or you can save it to your computer.  Counting down the 40 days to Easter, rather than using dates, makes the calendar reusable each year.

~~~~~

Lent Activities for the Family by Miiko Gibson

This is also a PDF you can save to your computer and print.

Gibson is a protestant and briefly, but respectfully, explains what Lent is.  The remainder of the e-book is comprised of ideas for activities to do as a family during Lent.

One of my favorite ideas is "#20. We can have 'new life' in Jesus! Do something crafty like make a tissue or coffee
filter butterfly. Or draw a butterfly and paint or color it. Look up 2 Corinthians
5:17."


I haven't decided yet which of these activities we'll do.  Gibson suggests printing them all on cardstock, placing in a bowl and randomly drawing each day.  With my little guys I feel the need to prepare things ahead of time but if my kids were older I might do that.

 ~~~~~

Resurrection Eggs by FamilyLife

Whether you buy this pre-made product or collect items to put in plastic eggs, this idea is fantastic for teaching children the events leading up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

I'll use these eggs a couple of times a week to discuss the Easter story so that my kids are familiar with it.  I'm also leaving them out in a basket as a part of our Spring/Easter decorations.

~~~~~

Monica at the Homespun Heart has a post FULL of ideas as well as another PDF to download or print.

I'm definitely using some of her ideas.  I especially like the way she links each activity to a specific verse.  She has another fun idea to hang a names of Jesus garland.  I can't use that one this year but I'm filing it away for the future!


~~~~~

I followed Monica's links to Mustard Seeds who had linked to Celebrated Family for an idea to remind children of Jesus' wounds.  On Good Friday you draw a red dot on the child's palm and write his name across the dot.

This will go along beautifully with the verse I plan to memorize in April with my children.

It says, "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that bought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

~~~~~

I also plan to make an Easter coloring book for each child using free online printables.  You can find a plethora (don't you just love that word?) of printables at the following links:
~~~~~
All holidays come with special food so we will have the traditional chocolate bunnies, Cadbury Eggs and maybe a bunny cake.  This year I want to try Resurrection Cookies and Resurrection Rolls.  I think my kids will enjoy making AND eating them.

Are these ideas new to you or traditions at your house?  Do you have an Easter or Lent tradition that I missed?

4 comments:

Amy said...

I'm going to look into the "gameboard" countdown! Haven't see it before... Otherwise, we'll do similar. I, too, read Homespun Heart and Mustard Seeds--and use many of their ideas. :)

M3 are most looking forward to our Resurrection Eggs, which we do several egg hunts throughout the inside of the house and then talk about them often! And, the Resurrection Rolls. These 2 are their favorites!

Jenn said...

Thanks for the links! I need to look into them! They sound like great ideas. Addi will love the coloring book pages. The resurection eggs are awesome- I need to get some. Thanks for the inspiration!

Carrie said...

We're going to go through Benjamin's Box again this year - because it was impacting and enjoyable last year. Of course, we'll be doing it earlier in the month of April, but we still want to do it. (I can't stand the thought of ignoring the moment altogether.) But a baby does make things interesting. I think I'm going to do the same thing for Easter that I did for Christmas in wrapping up our books in colored tissues paper to make the reads and various activities I HOPE to put into April more exciting. We'll see what comes out of all of my ideas! =)

Stephanie Kay said...

I really like the gameboard. She has it colored in the pic but it prints in black and white. You could easily have one for each child to countdown with or use one for the family (we are). I hope to color ours in as we travel the path to Easter. I'm also planning to write our activities on the path - once I get it worked out in my head.

I forgot to include making pretzels in the list of food. I'd like to give that a try. And I'll do a whole other post with book recommendations.

Carrie, wrapping the books is a great idea. Unfortunately, our Easter collection now totals FOUR, not counting the one I have on backorder at CBD. Our local library is also very lean in their Easter selection - unless I want bunnies and flowers and birds. But I'm not big into those.

Oh, and I should say thanks to Amy for the link to the Resurrection Rolls!! ;)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...