Jesus is alive!

Easter is a much harder story for preschoolers to understand than Christmas; for one the idea of death rather than birth is sadder, and coming back to life is a hard concept for them to grasp.
I had lots of great ideas for helping Zoë and Caleb to get to grips with this very special part of the Bible story, but as per usual I completely over estimated the amount of time and energy I'd have. Compared to last year I seem to be doing significantly less with Zoë, but I now have a very active 1 year old boy, medication-related fatigue and less time with Zoë as she's at pre-school. But I continue to try as it's important to teach them about God and to have fun together!

Easter Story

I had planned to spend 5 weeks looking at each stage of the story from the last supper to the ascension, but this was too slow as Zoë needed to know the end of the story and couldn't wait. I'd looked at using a book published by The Good Book Company called Play Through The Bible by Alice Buckley; this book contains lots of good ideas for activities to help preschoolers get to grips with the Bible. I'd also looked on-line and other books on my bookcase so had a huge range of ideas to pick from...

One of my favourite activities was the Easter Egg story - I filled 6 eggs with 6 items from the Easter story and then used it to tell (and recap repeatedly) the story. The items were a donkey, bread, grass, stone, nothing and cotton wool. Can you work out the main points?

We had lots of fun over the Easter weekend - here are some of the things we did...

• Visited family and did an Easter egg hunt, made Tomb biscuits and decorated a Simnel cake

• Visited Waddesdon with friends and experienced Colourscape and did another Easter egg hunt

• Visited Ashridge with friends and got Zoë's face painted and did another Easter egg hunt!

• And looked after Wispy the hedgehog who came and played in our garden

 

Mummy Time

I'm still reading through A Mom After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George and am finding it such a helpful and encouraging book. It's not easy reading, but you don't feel got at... A quote I found helpful in the last chapter I read is as follows:

On the one side, you must point them to God's way. And on the other, to enjoy any success in training your child for God and for life, you have to know your child, to know what makes him or her tick... Your children are individuals with special strengths and capabilities that should be developed.