Make Resurrection Day memorable and meaningful with one or more of these ideas!
- Easter Gift Reading. You will need a small wrapped gift or plastic egg filled with candy for each person participating in the game. (If you use eggs, use different kinds of candy to fill different eggs.) Give each person a gift, read the Easter account as given in the link, and have players pass their gifts to the left and right each time they hear the words left and right in the reading.
- Act out the Easter account. Provide a laundry basket full of dress-up materials such as scarves, robes, angel wings, artificial flowers, strips of white cloth for burial clothes, a bright flashlight (for the angel to hold), a tomb (closet door, under table with a blanket thrown over the top of it, and a pillow for the stone over the door).
- Hide individual pieces of an Easter-themed puzzle in plastic Easter eggs, and put the puzzle together after all the eggs have been found.
- Cut out individual letters to spell “He is risen!”, and place one letter along with some candy or other treats inside each plastic egg to be hidden. Have the children put all the letters together to spell “He is risen!” (For older children, let them figure out what the letters are supposed to spell.)
- Hide different flannelgraph figures related to the Easter account in plastic Easter eggs or tiny gift bags. When the children have completed their hunt, have them tell the story of Easter with the flannelgraph.
- Try one of these Family Activities for the Week of Easter that we posted last year.
- Make a Garden Cake together. (I’ll post a picture Saturday morning after we make ours later this week.)
On Friday or Saturday prepare the following:
(1) Cake in round layer pans (This will be the base of your cake.)
(2) Chocolate no-bake cookies (Make these different sizes, rather than all uniform. They will be used to form the hillside for the tomb on top of your cake)
(3) Another type of round, larger cookie (peanut butter, snickerdoodles, etc.) Make some small, and at least one large enough to be the “stone” in front of the tomb opening.
(4) Mix shredded coconut with green food coloring to use for grass.
(5) If desired, gather flower-shaped candies to use in the garden.
(6) Chocolate and green frosting
Assemble the cake as a family on Saturday night or on Easter Day.
- Stack the two cake layers, with frosting in-between.
- Frost the cake with green frosting, or use chocolate on the sides and green on the top.
- Stack no-bake cookies to form a hill-side on top of the cake, leaving an opening to form a hollow area for the tomb. (You may need to use some brown frosting to “glue” these cookies together.)
- Dab some areas on the no-bake cookies with green frosting and press green coconut into them to make grass.
- Spread brown frosting on the ground inside the tomb.
- Sprinkle as much of the cake as you wish with green coconut for more grass.
- Use some of the other cookies you have made for stones in the garden, and place the largest one to one side of the tomb’s opening.
- Place candy flowers in the grass and on the hillside.
- Cut a white napkin into strips, fold them, and lay them inside the tomb.
- Use some sort of figure (Lego, Playmobil, etc.) outside the tomb to represent the angel, along with other figures to represent the women coming to the tomb, if desired. (You can also dress these figures in period costumes by using scraps of cloth tied around the waist with string or twine.)