We start the Monday before Easter and learn parts of the last days of Christ and on through his death and Resurrection. It makes the story come to life and really teaches little ones the true meaning of Easter. On each night, we studied one of the following topics: Christ entering Jerusalem, Jesus Washing the Apostles feet, Christ praying in Gethsemane, the betrayal, His Crucifixion, The Tomb, and His Resurrection (falls on Easter Sunday). So it would be like FHE every night the week before Easter, but it breaks it all down. The activities (videos, role play, discussions, coloring page, whatever fits your family) that go along with them really help it come to life and makes it real. It's a great way to teach your family and also strengthen your own testimony of our Savior. Jaden was so excited once he realized we would be doing something every night. The thing about this is that it's all so adaptable, so when your family gets older, this week long experience will become a spiritual growing event for your teenagers as discussions get deeper and stuff. I'm just really excited. I hope I can figure out a way to do something like this for Christmas!
I really wish I could have come up with more activities that would work for pictures. Most of what we did were watching little videos to reinforce what we learned each day with pictures and stories. And when I did think to use the camera, we were already done with what we were doing. It was great to not have the camera distract from teaching Jaden the true meaning of Easter...so I guess, in a way, the lack of pictures is a good thing :).
One night we did a mock Last Supper. Jaden loved that the food we had was similar to what Jesus ate and he loved dressing up in clothing from that time period.
We had hard boiled eggs, flat bread, kabob things (with beef...someone used lamb which makes sense, but the more I thought about eating a little lamb, I just couldn't do it), fresh berries, and grape juice.
He LOVED these. He devoured it.
For desert we had honey with a piece of honey comb in it. So delicious.
On a different night, we made these: Resurrection Rolls. You get refrigerated crescent dough, and dip halved jumbo marshmallows in melted butter and cinnamon and sugar. Then you wrap them in the crescent dough and bake them for about 10 minutes. Let me explain.
The marshmallow represents Christ, the butter represents the oil they rubbed on his body, the cinnamon and sugar represents the spices they rubbed on his body, and the crescent dough represents the cloth that they wrapped his body in. The oven is the tomb. On the third day, we know that Christ rose again and was resurrected and that when Mary Magdalene entered into the tomb, he was gone. We placed a couple of Jaden's stuffed animals in front of the oven to represent the guards.
The cool thing about these, is when they are done cooking, you open them up and the marshmallow is no longer there! I'm so serious. It didn't melt in there and ooze out. There was really no trace of it inside. All there was was a little bit of bubbling butter and cinnamon and sugar. It was a cool visual for Jaden, and I was pretty wowed myself that it actually worked!
I know the white stuff looks like marshmallow, but it's not. It's the bubbling butter.
At the end of the week I was able to ask Jaden what the true meaning of Easter was, and I was so excited to say that he knew what it was!
Along with the more serious aspect of Easter, we also had our traditional Easter activities as well: Easter eggs, Easter treats, Easter bunny, etc.
I saw a Rice Krispies commercial that was promoting this treat for Easter. It looked easy enough, so we tried it! Jaden loved it, because he could really do it by himself and feel involved and important. It was a lot of fun, and yummy.
Plus, the fun thing is is that you put M&Ms inside of them...so when you shake them, they make a sound!
One day for school, we worked on our upper and lower case letters. I found this cute printable (online of course) of eggs, with the top half being the upper case letters and the bottome half being the lower case. He had fun building the eggs, and it reinforced what he already knew, which was great too!
I found this idea on the FamilyFun website. We had this for breakfast one morning. It's a little Easter nest made with hashbrowns in cupcake pans and eggs, onions, green peppers, and cheese in the middle. Yum and fun :)
I made cupcakes for some of my neighbors. This is the first time that I have used one of these cupcake box holder things. Aren't they adorable? Totally makes it look professional, straight from a bakery.
At cooking class last week, the kids made edible Easter Baskets. And I mean EVERYTHING was edible. I'm tellin' ya, the teacher is amazing and so creative. Here's a (pretty much) step by step organization of photos to show you how it was done. So fun!
The following are pictures of homemade Peeps that they also made in the cooking class. Just took marshmallows, dipped half in melted white chocolate bark, and then dipped in sprinkles or colored sugar.
What is Easter without coloring eggs? NOT Easter, if you ask me. Just kidding. But really, almost everyone dyes eggs on Easter, and we are a couple of them! This was Jaden's first time, and he was amazed.
Hope you all had a happy Easter... from our house to yours!
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