Resurrection Celebrations - Holy Week for Preschoolers

I hope you all had a wonderful Holy Week. I really enjoyed exploring it with Matthew this year because I feel like some things are starting to click.

We went over to his best friend's house last week to do some Easter learning together.

We started with the book "Hoppy Easter." In it, the characters have an Easter Egg hunt but for every egg they find, they name a way God demonstrates His love. So the kids found eggs (12), and then named 12 ways God shows love. The kids, on their own, named Jesus coming to earth, love, and Christ breaking His body and spilling His blood for us as some of the reasons.

Then we used the number 12 to segue into 12 Disciples and that one way that Christ showed love to them was to wash their feet. We read about the foot washing at the Last Supper. The kids then took turns washing each other's feet.

Then we went from the feet washing to the Last Supper. We used this book for the foot washing and the Last Supper. We read about the Last Supper and then we had our own supper, and broke bread and drank "wine" (sparkling cider).

Then we read about the Crucifixion from this book and we prayed together.

We ended the afternoon by making Resurrection Rolls. The marshmallow represented Christ's body. We "anointed" it with oil (butter), perfumed it with spices (cinnamon and sugar) and put it in the tomb (oven) to come back and check on later, just as Jesus friend's came to check on Him later. When the rolls came out of the oven, "Jesus" was gone and all that was left was the "cloth," just like the tomb was empty!

Then I read the whole Easter story from Supper to Resurrection from the Bible. I used some scripture from the "real" Bible, and then I read the whole story from a children's Bible. We go back and forth on our favorite. For Easter, we liked the Jesus Calling Storybook Bible and the Jesus Storybook Bible the best.

It was a fun, fun day, and I pray that at least some of it penetrated their little hearts.

The next day was Good Friday service at church.

On Saturday, we repeated the egg hunt and Resurrection Rolls so DH could participate, we dyed Easter eggs and talked about new creations, and we had a family viewing of "What's In the Bible: Jesus is the Good News." If you go here, you can order the DVD for $1, and they'll also send you a link to stream it online while you wait for the DVD to arrive. We were very impressed with this video. There was enough that Matthew could understand now, but still tons of content that he can continue to digest for the next few years. When budget allows, I'd be interested in the series.

Yesterday was Resurrection Celebration at church. We have been visiting a new church recently because my DH thinks that another church would be a better fit for our family. This has been a rough transition for me and I missed "my" church family for Easter, but the service at the new church was beautiful and our close friends have been attending this church with us and another friend joined us so that was nice. The Pastor gave one of the best Easter messages I've heard. They were doing Baptisms and we wanted Matthew to witness them so we kept him in service with us. All through the service, he kept (loudly) answering the Pastor's rhetorical questions. I was amazed that his attention was so captivated.

We ended last night with dinner with Todd's grandparents. We're going to do some more reading today and coloring of Easter coloring pages. I don't want to just stop everything Easter now that the day is technically over. Our whole lives should be a celebration of Easter!

How did you celebrate Holy Week?