Easter activities and ideas

Easter is nearly upon us – in fact it is fewer than 2 weeks away! I enjoy doing something a bit special each year as part of our homeschooling programme, in order to make the most of this time (apart from the obligatory chocolate eggs!) After all, Easter is probably more significant than Christmas in the Christian calendar! Below are some ideas for celebrating Easter with your family.

1. Bake some Hot Cross buns

This is something I’ve intended to do for quite some time, but have never quite gotten around to! Perhaps 2020 will be the year!

2. Bible Reading Plan

For the past couple of years I have used one of the 14 day Bible reading plans put together by a lady called Wendy on her blog Musings In Adelaide. These are similar to a Christmas advent Bible reading plan, and basically take you through the whole Easter story. Provided by her is a daily reading plan with questions, plus an idea for either a picture or item to go with each day. She suggests placing the appropriate items inside plastic eggs (e.g. from Kinder Surprise) for children to discover before reading the day’s passage. Alternatively, you could do a colouring-in picture or find another way to incorporate these. One year we created a collage, made up of the key verse and picture to display on the wall so the kids could remember the whole story.

She has designed two; one for younger children in Matthew, which was supposed to start yesterday (the Monday 11 days before Good Friday) and one for primary-aged children in Luke, which is meant to start on Wednesday this week (the Wednesday 9 days before Good Friday). If you’re late starting (sorry!), just do a couple each day until you catch up!

3. Make a Tomb

That sounds a bit macabre I know, but the idea is to depict the Easter story in a more hands-on way! Once, we made a grassy hill with a tomb in it out of actual soil and grass seed (an idea suggested by a colleague of my husband’s) – it was fun to watch the grass grow but it required a bit of fore-thought! I’ve heard of paper-mache tombs as well, or you could make cardboard or paper versions. You can actually re-enact the story on the appropriate days using a figurine, and then on Easter Sunday (after you sneakily remove the ‘Jesus’ figurine) the kids will discover the empty tomb!

4. Passover Meal

Imitating the Passover meal on ‘Maundy Thursday’ (the night before Good Friday) is another activity we have enjoyed for the last few years (also from Musings In Adelaide). We all take turns washing one another’s feet before the meal, and have a delicious dinner of roast lamb and ‘unleavened’ bread (the wraps or pita bread I’ve bought have unfortunately still had yeast in them!) She suggests wine or juice as an accompaniment.

5. Good Friday

Live-stream a Good Friday service (ordinarily we would be able to actually go to one!)

6. Easter Saturday

Noel Piper, in her book “Treasuring God in our Traditions” suggests keeping Easter Saturday as a low-key sort of day, because in the Easter story it was a day of waiting (between Jesus’ death and resurrection).

7. Easter Sunday Celebration

This is a great day to do an Easter egg hunt, since the empty egg represents the empty tomb! After live-streaming an Easter service you could have an Easter party with a cake and decorations, and get the kids to come up with some fun games.