EASTER WEEK- PRE-K 3

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Ana’s Week
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Easter is such an important holiday to me, so I knew that celebrating the Easter holiday couldn’t be missed. I spent the weeks up to Easter focusing on Bible stories so that we could easily transition into celebrating the Easter holiday on a Christian note. The Resurrection Eggs I bought at Hobby Lobby were by far the most exciting thing that Aria played with during the week to understand the religious component to the Easter holiday, but I won’t deny that Aria’s favorite part of Easter was definitely the visit by the Easter bunny (because who doesn’t love a basket of toys and an Easter egg hunt). I loved how excited Aria got by Easter, and I think it might be her new favorite holiday after all of the fun activities and events we went to during the week. With dealing with the stress of Zach trying to go back to the military and having to wait for answers, it was nice to take a breather from difficult lessons and just have a blast together.

While I recommend keeping the death and resurrection of Jesus as the focal point of the week, there are so many great activities and fun items out there to buy for both the religious and secular sides of the holiday. I definitely need to find more religious activities to do next year, but I felt like she at least got a basic idea of why we celebrate Easter.

The Dollar Tree had a bunch of great stuff to make an Easter box that I can reuse again each year. I also found a bunch of great refrigerator magnets, painting items, and games. I loaded up on Easter books at a Michaels sale, and we watched a really great movie about the Easter holiday called Read and Share Bible Easter. The more items you can find that can be reused in later years (especially if you have younger kids), I think that the more it will pay off down the road!

Aria’s favorite things to do during the week involved Easter egg hunts and Easter dying. I definitely didn’t hard boil enough eggs for her to dye because she was so upset when we ran out of eggs. Aria loved the Easter egg hunts at church, the house, and library, and they can really be a great way to teach kids to learn to pay attention to the environment around them. I highly recommend going to church at the end of the week (especially because they can really add on to what you did during the week). We lucked out and our church had a petting zoo on Easter with baby chicks and bunnies!  Since Aria finished the week asking when Easter and the bunny was coming back, I’m pretty sure Easter was a hit!

Jessica's Week

It’s rare that I feel like we are able to capture all aspects of a theme or holiday but I feel like we covered Easter much better than Valentine’s, Saint Patrick’s Days, or possibly even Christmas! I’m not saying everything went perfect (obviously there are things we could improve on and little mishaps) but overall this week was a smashing success!
I felt like it was really important to dive deep with the Christian meaning behind Easter and while I didn’t want to frighten a delicate three year old, I did want her to understand the gravity of Christ’s death and resurrection. Each day we made a rock to add to our “story stones” timeline of Jesus’ death. T did a great job of sequencing the ones we already had and then listening as I described or read about the next part of the story.
 Since we have been doing lots of spring planting I found it appropriate to let Taegan make her own resurrection garden. We choose a large pot to position right off the front porch and filled it with dirt. We used a small plastic potting container for the tomb and mounded a hill overtop. Taegan got to cover the hill with moss, plant a few flower seeds to grow around it, and find a large stone to “roll away”. I helped her fashion a cross using twine and two sticks.
We also did a slightly different activity with resurrection eggs. I bought a set when T was barely old enough to walk and each year we open them up and talk about the symbols, sometimes hiding them to make it more fun and get in just one more egg hunt. But again, this year I wanted to go deeper. I used each egg as a nightly devotional. Instead of a bedtime story we opened an egg and went through "totally tots" blog on its significance. Jill has done a wonderful job of tying actual bible verses and biblical stories together with thoughtful commentary on the objects. It’s a large bite for toddlers but I amended my explanations slightly and I think if we go over these lessons each year she will really get a lot out of it. I encourage you all to check it out at: http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/03/from-tots-to-teens-easter-eggs.html?m=1
While we did go to Easter Sunday service, I felt like our Christian Easter Activities peaked on Good Friday not Sunday. I took Taegan to an Episcopalian Church downtown. Not that we are Episcopal but they had this “stations of the cross” service for kids I couldn’t resist. At each station a few bible verses were read and then the kids could reverently interact with a scene. They had actors play out the Lord’s supper, a garden for Gethsemane, and most heart-tugging, a life-size wooden cross the children all touched while we sang a somber hymn. There were nails in the cross for the children to inspect as the final details of Jesus’ journey were shared. Then each child was encouraged to spend a moment praying and thanking Jesus for giving his life so that ours could be spared. It was a little out of my comfort zone to be in such a formal, old-fashioned church but when I saw my daughter kneeling over a nail on the Savior’s cross with her hands folded and head bowed, I found myself smiling in amazement and wonder at how close I personally felt to our Lord. It was breath-taking!
On a lighter note, we had lots of fun with the Easter Bunny as well. I decided to host my first “Easter” party this year. We invited the “Krunchy Kids” holistic mom’s group over for a bunny brunch and some themed activities. Of course there was a traditional egg hunt but we also did a bunny gunny sack race, splatter throwing (clean empty egg shells filled with paint for kids to throw at canvas), and painted watercolor butterflies bracelets that the kids could fly around the yard. It was a lot of fun celebrating with our friends and I hope this can be a yearly tradition much like our Christmastime Gingerbread party.
For learning activities, I really liked counting and balancing plastic eggs. It was tactile, encouraged creative stem building, and Taegan got to indulge her sticker obsession by labeling each egg piece with numbers and stacking them in order. We worked on spelling with some great Christ-centered printables from Teaching Mama, and finally we made dying eggs into a science experiment. We set up a large outdoor dying station to keep the mess contained and used a little bit of everything. First there was vinegar vs water dye, then tye-dye color mixing paint in dudley’s eggeceptional spinner. I highly recommend the spinner for littles who don’t want to get messy and it’s also great for reviewing primary to secondary colors. The finishing touch was using crayon resist magic to draw pictures on the eggs and practice writing Taegan’s name. She loved watching it appear like magic when we dropped it in the dye.
Sorry for the extra lengthy blog but I just had to share what a wonder-filled Easter we were fortunate enough to enjoy. Hope yours is just as blessed!