5 Ways to tell the Easter story... creatively!

One fellow minister put it this way: "it's easy to teach kids about the true meaning of Christmas, so why is Easter so much more difficult?"  I hadn't thought of it that way before, but she was right!  Dozens of ideas to teach Jesus' birth were already popping into my head, but Easter...?  I was drawing a blank!

So I rounded up some of the "best of" ideas on the 'net that I thought would work for the various ages of kids I work with in the inner city!  Some of these are written by stay-at-home moms and would need to be adapted for a school-age, daily/weekly program, but still have some merit to them!

1. Resurrection Garden

While this mom, from www.impressyourkids.com, made a garden (in a bowl) on Good Friday to watch slowly die, I can see it working just as well to make a garden together one evening (if you're a daily program, perfect, if not, just space this out over 3 weeks), see it dead the next time you're together, and have it come back to life later.  Not ideal for big groups, but an excellent visual as you tell the story!

2.  Resurrection Cookies

Apparently this is an old idea, but it's new to me, and I love it!  The cookies do need to bake overnight, so either make a batch beforehand for immediate gratification, or if you have a daily program, they can wait one day!  I love how every ingredient is necessary for the cookies, and every ingredient tells part of the Easter story.  Vickilynn from Real Food Living gives a complete recipe with Biblical references and devotional points for each step of the baking process.

3.  Resurrection Eggs

Melissa, from Fill My Cup, has taken this classic Easter-telling-story aid and given us an affordable DIY version ($4 to make your own set, she says).  The idea is to put a symbol representing each part of the Biblical story into a numbered set of a dozen plastic eggs.  Hide the eggs around your space and have a traditional Easter egg hunt.  Once all the eggs are found, have children open the eggs in the right order to pull out a symbol of the Easter story, read a slip of paper from inside the egg and tell the Easter story through the eggs.

4.  Passion Tree

Ann Voskamp, author of Trail to the Tree, offers this free tutorial, devotional and printable classic art decorations to make your own `passion tree.` If you`re unfamiliar with the concept, it`s dead branches placed in a vase, decorated with symbols of Christ`s passion (an idea similar to a Christmas tree - you may have seen the more commercialized Easter egg trees for sale at Walmart!)  This devotional is quite liturgical, so may be suited for older groups, but a simpler way of a passion tree is still to place dead branches in a vase - symbolizing Christ`s death - and decorate with eggs - symbolizing new life - to tell the Easter story.  Andrea of Babe of My Heart and Kaylin of A Mustard Seed Journey have also teamed up to provide instructions on making a "lent tree" and more kid-friendly printable ornaments.

5. Scavenger Hunt

Thriving Family, a Focus on the Family publication, has a week of activities for families and children.  Many are very family-specific, but I liked this one: "Send your children on an Easter scavenger hunt. Instruct them to find items that symbolize different parts of the Easter story. Examples: A rock (the tomb), two sticks (the Cross), something black (sin), something red (blood), something white (a clean heart), something green (growing in Christ). Older children can go on a digital scavenger hunt, taking photographs of items that remind them of Easter."

More ideas?  Leave a comment!