New Easter Traditions 2012

Hi Ladies!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!  There was a lot going on last week.  I pray we will all get into our routines and stay in God's word!

How was this Easter different for you? 

I'd also love to here the activities you did this year to make Easter more about Jesus. What did you do to teach your kids about Jesus?

I started out discouraged about Easter, realizing I had no real plans to point it to Jesus.  But I found some great ideas online and this Easter turned out great. It was a busy week, but we added in some lessons and fun activities.  And just as I was thinking my kids are too little to get it, they started talking about Jesus' resurrection!  The repetition did pay off!  Praise God!

Our activities...

Throughout the week, we read the Easter stories from the kids Bible's, rather than just our daily reading through in order.  From the Last Supper to when Jesus is risen!  Repetition!

When we went to my Grandma's we took them some white Easter lilies. We did a little Easter lesson along with giving them flowers. We put red food coloring in the water, which will turn the white flowers red. We shared that the white flower represents Jesus and the red represents His blood that was shed when he died on the cross and took our sins upon Himself. 

When I bought the flowers, I was able to share what we were doing with the cute checker lady and the guy checking next to her who was listening too. She thought it was a neat idea and the young tough guy checker was nodding and smiling too. Pretty cool.

We made a Resurrection Garden.  I never added the live flowers, because I kept forgetting to buy some.  Zac loved the garden and would talk about it often.  Today (The day after Easter) he told me all about it!  He told me that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  Then he was buried in "the big rock".  Then he was gone.  Jesus is alive!  So awesome to hear him tell me the story!  He and Lucy have been saying, "Jesus is alive!" all day!

Easter Sunday at church.

We did our Un-Easter Baskets on Monday.    Zac loved finding the rocks and helping me think of "sins" to label them with.  He may or may not have gotten the whole concept, but was excited anyway.  I decided to do it Monday, so it wouldn't have been so distracting on the weekend with everything else going on.

Going on a rock hunt.

Zac was very helpful and interested as we listed how we sin and that our sin separates us from God.

But!  Jesus’ blood covers our sin!

Praise God!

Jesus took our sin and gave us the gift of eternal life!  We are no longer separated from God if we believe! 

Here is Zac on the Friday after Easter.  We were playing outside and he pointed at the rocks and said, “Oh, look!  A tomb!”  He called the tomb in our Resurrection Garden “the big rock” all week.  I continued telling him it was the tomb.  He remembered when he saw the big rocks outside.

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