Easter Festivities

About 3 years ago I found an amazing book called A Christ-Centered Easter by Janet and Joe Hales. It has totally changed the way we celebrate Easter around here. I love it! We start on Palm Sunday and end on Easter Sunday. Each day we talk about Christ and what he was doing each day for the last week of his time on Earth. There are tons of stories, plays and activities in the book for different age levels, so we can do some of the same and some different things each year.

This is how this year went:

Palm Sunday

• Put up a picture of Christ's Triumphal Entry and told the story
• Read a story about the significance of the palm fronds
• Talked about what "Hosanna" meant
• Made our own palm fronds from cardboard and green paper
• Acted out the Triumphal Entry ourselves. Emma wanted to be Jesus, and promptly ordered her apostles (the other kids) to get her a donkey (Daddy). We had a great discussion about how Jesus might have done it differently. :)

Monday - Cleansing the Temple

• Put up a picture of Christ cleansing the temple and told the story
• Did the "Easter Story in Eggs" activity where you have little objects in Easter eggs that relate to the story of Easter (like a nail, a bar of soap, an empty one, a silver coin, etc.), as well as a slip of paper with the scripture reference that ties it in. The kids loved opening each one and seeing what was inside, and Emma loved trying to guess what it was referring to before we looked it up in the scriptures.

Tuesday - Parables & Miracles & Teachings

• Put up pictures of some of the miracles Jesus performed and some of the parables He taught.
• Focused on the story of the Widow's Mite because my Dad just sent me an actual mite. The kids loved looking at it and we had some great discussions about tithing and fast offerings and sacrifice.

Wednesday - Parables & Miracles & Teachings continued (resting in Bethany)

• Same as yesterday, but focused on the Parable of the 10 virgins this time.

Thursday - The Last Supper and Jesus' Prayer & Agony in Gethsemane

• Put up pictures of the Last Supper and Christ in Gethsemane and Judas' Betrayal, and told this part of the story.
• Talked about the Jewish tradition to clean the house in preparation for the Passover.
• Had the kids pick their toys.
• Sat down to our "Jerusalem Dinner." Not really a traditional Passover meal, I just prepared foods that were common in Jesus' day. Here was the menu: grape juice, lamb chops (I'm not a huge fan of lamb, but I found this yummy recipe that uses fresh mint, coriander, cumin and garlic), lentil soup, pita bread, matzo crackers and boursin cheese, olives, pistachios, romaine salad with purple onion, goat cheese and sliced almonds. The kids liked the lamb chops, pita bread, olives and pistachios the best. :)

Friday - Jesus' Trial and Crucifixion

• Put up pictures of the trial and crucifixion, and told this part of the story.
• We were going to make the "Easter Story Cookies" that are found in the book, but ran out of time. We'll probably still do them at some point as Emma was really excited about them. Each step of the recipe represents part of the Easter story and you leave them in the oven (tomb) all night and in the morning when you take them out they are empty inside, hollow.

Saturday - the book has ideas to talk about the Jewish Sabbath and other Easter activities

• We do all our "secular" Easter stuff on this day: the Easter bunny came and left the kids new Easter baskets with some chocolate and Webkinz and hid eggs all over the house for the kids to find (they were SO excited; it was AWESOME!), the kids went to an Easter Egg hunt and activity at the church, we colored Easter eggs, and I was really busy getting food ready for Easter Sunday.

Easter Sunday - Jesus' Resurrection and Appearances

• Left early for church and stopped at a park to take Easter portraits. It was a bit nippy outside, but they loved running up and down the hills. :)
• Had friends join us for a feast of ham, cheesy potatoes, green salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs, our traditional orange bunny rolls, with homemade pecan pie and fruit pizza for dessert.
• Put up pictures of the resurrection, and told this part of the story.

I have to admit that Monday was definitely a recovery day after all this activity. I was one worn out mommy. It was a wonderful week though! My mom had sent each of the kids $5 for Easter with the instructions that they were to go to a dollar store and pick out 5 items. We did this on Monday, and the kids had a blast! They loved getting to pick what they wanted, and they are still enjoying playing with all their new treasures.