Making Easter Meaningful for Kids

Easter can often turn into more of a celebration of spring than a religious holiday, but for Christians the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection are the center of this observance. While all the decorated eggs and baby animals are cute and fun, there’s a deeper meaning behind the celebration of new life.

I’ve shared religious Easter activities for kids before, but I wanted to give you some more ideas if you’re looking for ways to make Easter more meaningful for kids.

I always love the idea of tying holidays to acts of service or kindness in the community, and Coffee and Carpool uses the Easter season to encourage her kids with kindness activities. The post includes some ideas you can use for acts of kindness, or you can come up with your own. For however many days before Easter as you want, you can make a paper chain and each link in the chain contains an idea for an act of kindness.

Some people take the reverse advent calendar idea and use it for Lent, or you can take time to clean the house as a family and find items you aren’t using that you can donate to others who might need them.

Using a symbol of the empty grave is a common way to teach kids about Easter (and there’s a crafty version in that Easter post linked above). This can be done with resurrection rolls (Yummy Healthy Easy has a super simple version made with crescent roll dough), or try this recipe from Around My Family Table for meringue resurrection cookies.

You can also use a tool like an Easter story egg to help tell the story of Easter to kids. And of course you can read books that touch on the religious aspects of the holiday. The True Meaning of Easter by Melissa Wingo follows a mouse through the Easter story and includes relevant Bible verses. And while it is more about Easter marking the coming of spring than it is about religion, Easter on the Farm by Phyllis Alsdurf includes a spread about going to church as part of their Easter activities. It also shares the tradition of the Easter tree made with spring branches, which some families decorate with sentiments about Jesus or things they are grateful for that God has provided.

Does your family have a special way of making Easter meaningful for kids? I’d love to hear about it!

Next Plan Idea:

Religious and Acts of Kindness Advent Calendars

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply