I love Easter! I love it like most people love Christmas! The promise of new life reflected in the season with its blooming of daffodils and the lighter evenings after the cold and darkness of winter.
I felt inspired to create a resurrection garden a couple of years ago, initially building one from play dough, but this year I finally built up enough courage to grow one! Given my poor performance in keeping plants and flowers alive, this was quite a feat.
It turned out to be very easy. I purchased a large plant tray, a small flower pot, some soil and grass seed. I covered the tray with soil and built a mound of soil over the flower pot. Once the pot was held in place, I added grass seed pushing it into the soil. I watered it and waited about six days for signs of life and by the sixth day grass started to sprout and from then on grew very quickly. I added some stones that I collected from our driveway and a large stone for the tomb.
I wanted the children to open an egg each day and find a symbol of Easter inside that could be built into the garden scene. I used seven plastic eggs and placed a chocolate for each child inside together with a symbol and a card. The cards were downloaded from this website. The website uses more cards as part of a resurrection egg activity, but I stuck with just seven days. I hung the eggs on a tree for the children to take down and open up each day.
In addition to the symbols I included some larger items: a donkey, three crosses, an angel and a small LED light that will shine out of the tomb on Easter morning (more photos to follow).
The children absolutely loved it and we accompanied the activity with readings from the bible story to make sure the children could appreciate the true meaning of Easter.
What we used:
Large plant tray
Soil
Grass seed
Small plant pot
Small stones
One large stone
Plastic eggs
Symbols for the eggs: green foam paper palm leaves, bread, a foil cup to symbolise suffering, a gold coin, a crown of thorns made from twisted jewellery wire, a crucifix, a swab to represent Jesus' clothes in the tomb (I decided that the "clothes" would be placed in the tomb for the children to discover on Easter morning, rather than in the egg).
A donkey figurine
An angel (made from silver tinsel pipe cleaners)
3 crosses (made from coloured lollipop sticks)
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