Easter Eggs and Baskets

Holy Week is upon us and I wanted to share with you all some fun ideas the might help you keep the focus on Christ. Our salvation is a gift given through the events we have entered into a celebration of. I pray that we can learn to dwell on this for the whole year and that the entire Holy week would actually feel like a Holy week due to the concentrated time and attention we give it. I'm not there yet with my family but each year we try a little harder to grab the kids attention (and our own) off of "life" and onto the giver of it.


Please remember this is not to make you feel guilty or take away any of the fun for your family but it is simply my way of getting your creative wheels spinning.

Spring/Easter Baskets

I have 5 kids and about 2 kids ago we realized that giving each of them an Easter basket full of fun toys, clothes and candy (that I wouldn't even let them eat) of their own was a bit over the top. Here are a few basket related ideas to encourage you to simplify and help you come up with your own way of doing this.

- Instead of each family member getting a basket try doing one basket for all to share. Include something that reminds you of each child in it but encourage them to share it all because it is for them all.


- Skip the basket thing all together!


- If that last one was too hard try doing a Spring Basket at the beginning of spring. You can put all the silly eggs, bunnies, chocolates and goofy stuff in it but give it in the name of the fun season rather than on the most Holy of days! It might be fun to make that a tradition and each year to get a new book your family is going to focus on through the spring season.

Easter Eggs

Resurrection Eggs are a fun set of eggs full of symbols that tell the story of the Easter Season. When you buy them they come with a devotional that helps you talk through the events of Holy week with your child. Here are some fun ways to use them as a family:

- Instead of sitting down and doing them in one night use it as your Easter countdown. Do one egg per morning as a family devotional and of course on Easter morning your kids will be delighted with the best egg of all - an empty one... reminding us that Christ has risen indeed!

- The last couple years we decided to do a scavenger hunt for them. We pulled out the carton like we were going to look at our resurrection eggs and in the carton there was a note from one of the eggs. It said that some guy who doesn't love Jesus had egg-naped them and taken them away so we wouldn't think about Jesus this year. The egg also left a note that if we didn't hurry and find him he might get cooked (hint hint). So the kids ran to the kitchen to save the egg (which they found in the oven) and when they brought it back we opened it, talked about what was inside and then read the note the next egg had given that egg for us. Each egg they went searching for we assigned a new head investigator so that our oldest didn't get to find all of them. It was tons of fun and really kept all of their attention!

- I was also thinking that this year we would do Easter Egg hunts for fun throughout the season but on Ressurection Day we might just skip that and leave the focus where it belongs - on Christ!