With Easter approaching, we spoke with two of our First Free staff members: Toni Rowley, Kids Ministries coordinator; and Erin Hildreth, Mom’s Day Out coordinator. Both are moms always on the lookout for new and creative holiday ideas for their own families as well as their kids at First Free.

“I think it’s important for parents to understand this,” Erin says. “Christmas is a wonderful time of year. It needs to be focused on. But Easter has to be focused on as much as Christmas. We think about baby Jesus, but then it’s Easter bunnies, Easter baskets, Easter dresses, Easter brunch. Jesus gets swept over very, very commonly.”

“But this is what our faith is based on,” Toni adds. “This is the big burrito.”

They both laugh at Toni’s metaphor, but the point is taken. And the first rule they both mention: Don’t just leave this teaching responsibility to church.

“The core of where this should be coming from is Mom and Dad and family,” Toni says. “We are just the extension of what you are doing in your family.”

For parents or grandparents with little kids, here are a few hands-on activities to help them understand the Easter story:

Resurrection eggs

“And then it goes all the way through the story until the very last egg is empty, representing the empty tomb,” Erin says. “’What happened?? There’s nothing in here!’ And they’ll start looking around for things. And then we say, ‘Nope. Jesus wasn’t in the tomb.’”

You can buy a whole kit from Amazon, but it’s not hard to just make Resurrection eggs. Here’s a DIY guide from Faithward.org.

“Because little ones are very tactile, they need to hold things and see things and connect things,” Erin says. “I always encourage the (Mom’s Day Put) teachers to use the Resurrection eggs.”

Toni adds that if younger kids’ attention spans may not last through opening 12 eggs, parents can shorten the list to six. There’s also a book, Benjamin’s Box, that Mom’s Day Out uses with Resurrection eggs.

Easter scavenger hunt

Similar to Resurrection eggs except this time you’re either hiding stuff for kids to find around the house or yard, or just giving them a list of items already around the house or yard. Either way, each element tells part of the story.

Here’s one downloadable example of the clue cards kids start with.

Resurrection rolls

The application: Jesus never sinned. The white of the marshmallow represents his purity. After he was crucified, his friends prepared his body for burial with oil and spices – represented by the butter and cinnamon. Jesus’ body was wrapped in linen and placed in a tomb – both represented by the crescent roll.

When you break open the baked rolls, they’re empty – just like the tomb on Easter morning.

Toni’s family makes Resurrection Rolls every Easter season, then adds another element to the lesson.

“We make them together, we’re talking about it, and then we go and give some to our neighbors,” she says. “So it has that relational aspect to it. But we’re also doing it as a family.”

And of course, after all of that, they get to eat rolls together.  

“They’re really good.”

Easter story snack mix

A little like trail mix, this is an assortment of tasty treats that all stand for some element of the Easter story. Here’s a printable recipe.

Books

A few of other recommendations from Toni and Erin (click for links):

Videos, with a caution

And sure, there are plenty of kids’ videos containing the Easter story — for starters, take a look at the list on RightNow Media, to which our church offers a free subscription. Just be cautious not to make video your primary teaching tool. Toni mentions an all-too-common moment in a store recently when she saw a baby fussing. The mom immediately started a video on her phone and handed it to the child.

How to counteract our tendency to sedate kids with screens?

“You go back to the old,” she says. “You need to teach kids with sight, with tactile, with verbal. You really have to have it all together all the time. Especially touch. With technology, we lose relationships with others, and I think that’s an important aspect to build into it.”

“It’s so much better coming from the parent’s mouth to the child,” Erin adds. “Sharing what you believe as a parent, with your child, is going to be the most profound way to share.”

“And just spending time doing these things,” Toni says. The rolls and other hands-on fun make memories that videos don’t:

“My kids love doing it,” she says. “Now it’s a tradition that we do at Easter. They understand the story now. I don’t know how much they grasp the magnitude of it yet. But as they grow, they are never going to forget that.”

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Resurrection rolls photo: Bake from Scratch Magazine
Ressurection eggs photo: The Real Housewife