Joyful Learning in March

March was all about Easter. ( technically April was supposed to be about Easter but that didn't make sense this year so I shifted things). It doesn't seem like we really did a whole lot, but we did, it just wasn't picture-y type things.

We started by decorating. We hung up our Easter Banner (from way back here) and then decorated the ficus into a Resurrection/Easter tree using some colored paper eggs and adding our Resurrection eggs circles over the course of the month.

I prepared 12 eggs to help us countdown but instead of doing them the 12 days leading up to Easter, I spread them out over the month. I used Wife and Mom Today's verses and image ideas (but I found my own free clipart online).

Lucy really enjoyed opening them up (can you tell she styled her hair herself that day!) Some days we only read the verse and talked about it, and maybe read the same story from the Jesus Storybook Bible. On a few days, we had accompanying activities and crafts. Here are a few:

Making a sheep by coloring in her handprint and adding paper reinforcers. It actually looked very cute and sheeplike half way through but she kept adding more circles because she didn't want the sheep's legs, feet, face, nose, etc to be cold. In the end it was more of a mass of white circles but still a lot of fun, especially for kids who love stickers.

While we did that craft, we talked a lot about sheep in the bible and learned Isaiah 53:6 using Colin Buchanan's doo-baa-baa song which is incredibly catchy. It only took us that session to have it memorized although she knows says Isaiah like an Austrailian :-)

We painted over the tape then peeled it back to reveal - a cross! Okay, it really wasn't that big of a surprise but it looks quite pretty on our wall.

We colored eggs using fruits and veggies (blueberries, red onion skis, red cabbage and beets).



I missed the part where she said she dyed the peeled eggs for the first couple batches but the blueberry ones had both unpeeled and peeled and the peeled one was bright indigo and the very first one to be eaten! (left picture below)

 
This is what you get when you ask an 2 year old to smile!



I think if she had dyed eggs before she would have been disappointed with the muted colors we got but since this was new for her, she loved it and ate hardboiled eggs all week - starting with our passover/seder meal. We did it pretty much the same as last year, just reading from the (Jesus Storybook) Bible and talking about what the food meant. She really enjoyed dipping the bitter herbs in salt water part.


Here I am doing the lame leaning in thing because I thought Craig was cropping the picture much more than he actually was. Too bad, because maybe it would have cropped my junk laden island out too. 

We also made a palm branch and a tomb. We also made resurrection rolls again this year, but I actually got around to making real dough (this recipe). I know most of the recipes say to make the butter and cinnamon/sugar part represent the oils and spices but we don't do that so I'll share our way.

The marshmallow is Jesus. I asked her if Jesus had ever sinned and she knew the answer was no so we talked about how that meant he was still clean and white.

Then we talked about we have sinned and then we rolled "Jesus" in the butter and sugar and talked about how he was willing to take our sins and dirtiness onto himself. Then we wrapped him in dough and baked him in a oven/tomb, complete with guard.



Then it finishes as normal with the tomb being empty. We always have a bit of a white puddle left but that just becomes the linens :-)