short simple easter cross

Easter weekend. The shops are full of people buying up ridiculous amounts of chocolate in the forms of eggs, chickens and bunnies.

Now, it only occurred to me the other day that I totally don't get the link between the Easter Bunny and Easter. Someone said to Jumeirah in the shops last week "I hope the Easter bunny is good to you!", and she turned to me and asked " How is there an Easter bunny in the REAL story, Mum?"
When I spoke to someone from work what they thought, she answered " the bunny is for kids! It's cute and fluffy and a fun time for them!"

For me, Easter is so far from cute and fluffy it made me squirm. For me, it's about a man, an amazing man who'd done some amazing things, who was then accused of lying about who He was, and then crucified for it, and then rose to prove it was true. ( in a nutshell ;) )

It's a really tough thing to grasp as an adult, I can't imagine how a child takes all that in.

Today, I did something with Amahli ( Jumeirah has something great to do tomorrow, Jareds cool Easter activity comes on Sunday :)) that would begin to allow her to understand a bit more about Easter.


While Jumeirah was doing her egg shell craft ( we broke the shells we dyed the other day into little pieces so she could do some mosaic art with them) Amahli wanted to collage too. Mum sent the kids some cute Easter glitter (compete with egg, chicks and bunny shapes) and so I set up a simple collage on a cross shape. With her and her sister sitting beside her, we talked about what the glitter shapes were about.

The hollow Easter egg represents the empty tomb, the chick means new life. We talked about the Cross as well, to which Amahli commented "Jesus would be sad" so she seemed to get that it was a pretty sad time. It's still some fairly big concepts for a 2 yr old, let alone a 6 yr old but it's a building block, and it's something they'll get more as they get older.
Amahli had a great time gluing and sticking lots of shapes to her cross :)

Its simple, easy activities like this that open lots of possibilities for chats.

I hope its something that sticks ;)