I was about to begin an Easter kids devotional with my four almost five year old son when he made a comment about Easter being about the Easter Bunny.
I am all for the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, but I wanted to make sure my son also understood the true meaning of Easter. I had heard about resurrection eggs and started to research how to do them. I was a little put off at the thought of having to buy more items to fill these eggs since I had already spent so much on items for his Easter basket and Easter Sunday egg hunt.
The more I thought about it, I realized I can be creative with what I have at home without purchasing a single thing.
How I did that: I looked at verses and items other people had used and picked out ones that I knew I could make work with items I already had. Some people do resurrection eggs for longer than eight days, but I decided starting on Palm Sunday and ending on Easter Sunday was perfect. As my son gets older I may look at doing it for longer.
How I communicated these to my son: Saturday night (before Palm Sunday) I showed him the numbered eggs. I told him that every day (starting in the morning) I would hide one of these eggs for him to find. I told him each day he will learn something new about Jesus and why we celebrate Easter.
How I decided what to place on the papers: I looked at each bible verse and paraphrased each one with the best way I thought my son would understand without having to change the bible story too much. You could also just do the bible verse(s) directly without paraphrasing. You can alter what I have depending on your child(ren)’ s ages.
THE EGGS:
Day One: Since I chose to start on Palm Sunday, I wanted the first egg to contain something about why it’s Palm Sunday. I looked at Matthew 21:8-11 for the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem. For the item, I wanted some type of greenery to represent the “palms” or “cut branches from trees.” I have a lot of fake flowers around my house that have fake leaves attached. I cut one leaf off of those flowers to use.
Day Two: After Palm Sunday, I wanted to focus on events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion and the crucifixion itself. I feel like including Matthew 26:36-39 is important. Along with what I typed on this paper – I spoke with my son about how even Jesus was afraid just like sometimes we are scared. I explained that when Jesus felt those emotions, He turned to the Father and that we can do the same. For this item I emailed myself the ‘praying hands’ emoji so I could print it out on my computer. You could also do a google images search.
Day Three: I ended up changing my paraphrasing of Matthew 26:14-15 that is the free document below. I included three nickels because that is what I had in my purse, but any silver coins would work. Three dimes would equal 30. I let my son add these to his piggy bank afterwards.
Day Four: I will admit, this isn’t the best crown of thorns. I only had black or colorful pipe cleaner, not brown so I went with black. I cut one piece of pipe cleaner into one longer piece and 5 or more small pieces. I took the longer piece and made a circle. I took the smaller pieces and wrapped them around the circle to look like thorns. If you have a rose garden or any other plants/flowers that have thorns you could do one of those instead for older kids especially. You could also print a picture of a crown of thorns.
Day Five: I happened to have a sheet of cross stickers, so for this day I just cut one of them from the sheet. You could also use a cross necklace, wooden cross, picture of a cross, or draw a cross.
Day Six: I chose to take a popsicle stick and break it in half (so it would fit in the egg) to write “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” This could also be written on a piece of paper.
Day Seven: I run an in-home daycare so for this one, I happened to have a jar of rocks I had purchased previously for a sensory bin, but if I didn’t have that I would have grabbed a rock from outside our house. This can be any kind of stone or rock you can find whether real or decorative.
Day Eight: This one you leave empty. On previous days I include the paper in the egg, but in order to keep this egg empty like the tomb was on Easter morning – I left it out. I plan on reading to my son after he finds the egg. This day is a great opportunity to talk about WHY Jesus did this for us. I know my son will wake up excited to find all the eggs from the Easter bunny, but I will be making this conversation priority. I will hide this egg in his room to that will be the first one he searches for.
I have attached each day below for you to cut and use in your eggs. If you give this a try, come back and let me know how it goes! Happy Easter, He is risen!