Easter Days Three and Four and Five- Resurrection Eggs!

Wednesday through today are kind of lumped together, since we've been focusing on the Easter story...


Books & Resurrection Eggs


Wednesday we started looking at our Resurrection Eggs. These are12 colorful plastic Easter eggs that each hold a small token to help retell the Easter story. I finally got the book I was hoping to use with our eggs today:

The Story of the Resurrection Eggs in Rhyme and Song is such a great resource for toddlers! The Resurrection Eggs set comes with a small devotional book- but it isn't suited well for toddlers. Also, if you do the 1 egg a day format, you end up spending about 5 or 6 days on the death of Jesus. That's just a lot for a toddler-- so I like that this book chooses 7 eggs. It's just perfect for doing one a day on Easter week! The rhymes are very fun and there are songs to go along with certain days. Apparently, there's a DVD that goes along with the book, but we don't own it. We may have to try to find it for next year!

Wednesday- we focused on the story of Palm Sunday. Since we didn't have the Resurrection Eggs book, we just read the Bible story from Jonathan's Baby Bible. Jonathan still enjoyed pointing out Jesus in the pictures and was excited to open the first resurrection egg which had a little donkey inside. For art, we tried to make a donkey out of our orange playdough.

Thursday we focused on the story of the Last Supper/Passover Meal. We read the story of the Last Supper from The Jesus Storybook Bible. We opened our second and third resurrection eggs-- the coins and the cup.

Today we got our book in the mail and we opened up several more Resurrection Eggs- the praying hands, the crown of thorns, the cross made of nails, and the stone in front of the tomb.

Then we fingerpainted! I put some masking tape on a piece of fingerpaint paper to make the outline of a cross, and then I let Jonathan fingerpaint. He chose red paint and had a lot of fun!

For more Resurrection Egg ideas, see 2 Teaching Mommies 12 Days of Easter unit-- lots of great ideas there!

We are headed out of town for Easter, so Happy Easter everyone!

Easter Day Two

Yesterday we continued our Easter egg unit.

Books 

We read The Easter Story by Patricia Pingry. This was another age-appropriate introduction to Easter, focusing on the biblical narrative more than the traditions of Easter. It shares about who Jesus is, where He lived, and a little about His ministry with the twelve apostles. It then goes into the Easter story, being truthful about Jesus' death without being scary. It talks about how Jesus is alive today and how we can live too if we believe in Him! It's short and it held Jonathan's attention well. He had fun pointing out Jesus on each page. We'll be reading this book each year, I'm sure!

Math 


We sorted Easter erasers and tried to put them into patterns:

Art 

We tore up Easter colored tissue paper and pressed it onto contact paper that I had cut into the shape of a cross: 

Sensory Bin

We played with an Easter sensory bin. I filled it with tissue paper, Easter grass, confetti, plastic eggs, bendable bunnies, colorful cups, etc.:

Music

We listened to some Easter hymns/children's songs. Jonathan started jumping around to the children's song "Ho-Ho-Ho Hosanna"

And that was our day! 

Easter Day One

We started our Easter egg unit yesterday. Most of my ideas are coming from the Joyful Heart Learning program over at Hubbard's Cupboard.

Books 

We read The Best Thing About Easter by Christine Tangvald. This is a perfect introduction to Easter! The narrator (a little girl) shares her favorite things about Easter- Easter eggs, Easter candy, bunnies, ducks, and chicks, getting dressed up and going to church-- but none of those things are the best thing about Easter. She shares how the best thing about Easter is Jesus! The story shares how a very sad thing happened (Jesus died) but that Jesus is now alive and He loves us! It's a wonderful message for children and Jonathan picked up on it quite quickly. We read the book several times (at his request) and by the second or third reading, he knew that the best thing about Easter was Jesus! (Although when daddy quizzed him later he did say Easter eggs). This is such a sweet book-- the only thing that would have made it better would be if there was a little boy featured in the story as well as the girl.

Nursery Rhymes 


We read Humpty Dumpty. And we acted out the story using an Easter egg. We put the egg on a box and let it fall down and "crack". Then we put it back together.

Music


We listened to the Wiggles sing Humpty Dumpty:



Egg-tra Ordinary Sounds


I filled 12 plastic eggs with different materials (rice, beans, pasta, pennies, pom poms, and pumpkin seeds) and placed them in an Easter basket.

I encouraged him to try to match the eggs by shaking them and listening to the sound. He did this for a few minutes. However, he got much more interested in dumping out the contents of the eggs. I hadn't sealed them because I thought he might want to look inside to help match the eggs-- I'll know better next time!

I let Gracie play with some of the eggs too (supervised of course!) She loved it!

Art 

We colored a Humpty Dumpty coloring page as well as a letter "Ee" page from Carisa's Tot School Printables over at 1+1+1=1. He had a lot of fun using his Do-a-Dot markers again. 

We had a very fun day!