This week during Holy Week, we decided to make the story of Jesus' death and resurrection a bit easier for Caleb to understand with a homemade Easter Mountain and resurrection eggs. I got the idea of an making an Easter Mountain for Holy Week from Noel Piper's book, Treasuring God in Our Traditions, and the resurrection eggs from a craft blog I found online. I meshed these two ideas together for this week's Easter activities.
To make an Easter Mountain, I made some play dough and shaped into a mountain.
And found a stone for the tomb entrance and molded it to make it a better fit.
After it baked for four hours, Caleb got to paint it!
Here's the finished product. I also made pipe cleaner people to help act out parts of the Easter story. I made Jesus, a donkey, several disciples including Judas, 2 soldiers with swords, Pilate, and Mary. I added a cross made out of two backyard sticks and some holes around the base of the mountain as footholds for the people.
I broke up the story up as evenly as I could over seven days, starting with Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey and ending with his resurrection. This scene pictured above (Good Friday) is after Jesus was placed on the cross and was then laid in the tomb with the stone sealing the entrance. Saturday all we will do is wait.
On Sunday, we plan to place Jesus on top of the Easter Mountain and shout "Jesus is alive" when Caleb gets up. What a glorious sight!
Also along with the story and Easter Mountain, Caleb gets to open an egg each day (sometimes several eggs) that represent a tangible aspect of the story.
For example, the number 3 egg represents the Last Supper and the fourth shows that Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The last egg is empty to represent that the tomb is empty. He has risen! I have found this craft to be a sweet reminder for my heart of what Christ has done for me on the cross and what his resurrection means for my life. I can never be reminded too much!
Hi! My name is Melanie and I am a mommy to two girls and currently have another baby in oven on the way! My husband and I have been researching lent related activities to do with our children, so I bought the book treasuring God in Our Tradition by Noel Piper. I was intrigued and wanted to try the Easter Mountain, but I needed a visual to see what it should look like. So I typed in 'Easter Mountain' in Google and your blog was the first result! I would really like to do the Resurrection Eggs. I would greatly appreciate it if you could email me what you do for each day of the egg I would be soo grateful! I love both of theses activities! My email is melanienorman@mail.com. I also help with the children's ministry at my church and this would be a great activity. Thank you, thank you soo much!
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