Such A Winters' Day: Easter Festivities

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Easter Festivities

I kind of love that Easter was so late this year. By the end of April, it really feels like spring has arrived and we had lots of time to prepare for this joyful holiday.

I lucked out and got to be in charge of the Easter-themed preschool. With preschoolers, it's so hard to know how long they'll spend on a project. I thought they would take about 10 minutes to decorate their bunny ear hats and Easter bags. After thirty happy minutes, I had to force them to stop. Stickers are magical!

Here they are proudly showing off their finished products and pretending to be the Easter Bunny's assistants.

We did all kinds of fun activities, but the kids especially loved the Easter Egg hunt. To make it more difficult, I made each egg a different color combination (i.e. green on top, purple on the bottom), and gave each kid cards with 6 specific egg color combinations to find. It was super challenging for them and some needed quite a bit of help. One of our regular preschoolers was gone, so Bryce got to participate in his place. I'd say it probably is best suited to the 4-6 year old set, but still turned out really well, and made a fun activity educational as well.

It was raining, so we had the hunt upstairs

We had a couple Family Home Evening lessons talking about the real reason we celebrate Easter. Aubree taught both of them! The first because she was in charge and that's what she wanted to talk about, and the second because she found the Resurrection Eggs she made last year and wanted to do that lesson as well. As part of her first lesson, she had the kids draw pictures of Jesus coming out of the tomb.

Aubree's drawing

Bryce's drawing

On Saturday, our neighborhood organized a perfect little Easter Egg hunt. The hunt was scheduled for 3 pm, and the weather was atrocious. The rain was pouring down, the wind was howling, and it was cold and miserable. At 2:50, the clouds parted, the wind ceased, and we had lovely weather for the duration of our hunt.

The 2 and under crowd went first. Each kid was allowed to pick up 12 eggs. Graham initially seemed to get the concept; he quickly picked up six eggs and put them in his basket.

But then he stopped, looked at the eggs in his basket, and promptly dumped them all out. From then on he was much more interested in what the other kids were doing than in any silly old eggs.

Next came the 3-6 year old hunt. Bryce and Thane had no problems quickly reaching their 12 egg quota (all the kids were supposed to bring an egg carton to use for the hunt. I only had one, so that's why Thane is using an egg carton).

The final group was the 7+ crowd. They had to run up and down the street to find their loot, and they all had a blast.

Easter morning dawned sunny and lovely. We enjoyed a beautiful church service, where the highlight for me was singing, "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." I also got to teach 2 different primary classes, the 7/8's and my regular 4/5's. I am so impressed with how well they understand the story of our Savior's death and resurrection, and was touched by the testimonies they shared.

After church we hurried to Aunt Deanna's and Uncle Ray's for their traditional Easter egg hunt and dinner. The kids could hardly contain their excitement; they look forward to this event all year long. As soon as we hopped out of the car, the hunt began. This time, the only separate hunt was for the babies, Graham and Grayson. Their eggs were scattered on the back lawn, but in addition to eggs there were toys and crackers and treats. Unfortunately, Graham cared even less about egg hunting this time around. Aubree patiently helped him fill his basket, and he was plenty happy to get to eat the crackers.