24+ Easter Ideas

One of my 2011 goals is to make more holiday traditions. I especially want to make Easter more special. Less bunnies. If there are 12 days of Christmas I figure there should be at least 12 days of Easter.

Post-Easter last year, I found a website (I can't remember where...) with some excellent ideas. Here are the ones I loved, plus a few I added. I hope to try them this year! At least most of them. And maybe someday we'll do one activity for each day of Lent; that'd be awesome. For now, I'll start a bit smaller.

Here's to a meaningful Easter celebration!

1. Ash Wednesday: First Day of Lent

- Explain ashes demonstrate sorrow for sin

- light candle, make ashes

- read in Old Testament about "sackcloth and ashes" and “beauty for ashes”

2. Lent is traditionally about “giving up” something to remember Christ’s sacrifice

- Saturday fast for lunch for month before Easter

- Give money to humanitarian aid

- Discuss this, make jar for money, decide where to send money

3. Take “new life walk” outdoors

- Look for new shoots on branches, flowers, eggs in nests

4 (or more). Sing Easter songs

5. Devotional on "the Lamb of God"

- Read Ex. 12:21-24; John 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7-8

- Make a lamb: glue cotton balls to a small paper plate, then add pink and black construction-paper eyes, ears, muzzle, nose and hooves.


6. Ready for spring

- Clean out garden for bulbs

- or buy potted spring flower (tulips, daffodils, lilies)

7. Bring spring indoors

- Put soil in cup or pot and plant grass seeds

8. Devotional on redemption

- “recovering ownership" and "restoring value”

- read a scripture about redemption

9. Clean house

- Jewish families typically cleaned before the Passover celebration.


10. Passover dinner

(Ours would...will...be very small and simple.)

11. Give seed envelopes as Easter gifts

12. Make hot cross buns

13. Devotional on atonement

- Help kids understand the ideas of making amends or repaying a debt that is owed.

- Read a scripture about atonement.

14. (or more) Family and Resurrection

- Discuss ancestors’ story who have died.

15. Visit petting zoo and look for newborns

16 (or more). Movie on resurrection

- Watch “Lamb of God” or “The Testaments”

17. Devotional on repentance.

- Have a white shirt stained with red kool-aid. Apply bleach to stain.

- read Isaiah 1:18, pure as snow

- give example of a prayer of repentence

- challenge each person to repent of something that day

18. Palm Sunday

- pictures of palm leaves, donkey, words “hosanna”, “Son of David”

- read accounts from the Gospels

- discuss significance of each of above pictures or words

19. Devotional on resurrection

- Read a scripture passage that explains resurrection

- Answer "who, what, when, where, why and how" questions about resurrection

20. Devotional on witnesses of Jesus Christ's resurrection

- Find how many people saw Jesus after his resurrection

21. Maundy Thursday

- The word Maundy comes from a root word meaning "mandate" or "command."

- Look up John 13:34-35 to discover the "new commandment" Jesus gives.


- Read and discuss Matthew 26:36-46.

- Then read his prayer for all believers—including your family—in John 17:20-26.

22. Good Friday

- Probably evolved from the phrase "God's Friday."

- Talk about why the day Christ died is ultimately very good, the “good news”

- Isaiah 53:2-8, sufferings on cross

23. Ministered to spirits in prison

- Read 1 Peter 3:18-19, 1 Peter 4:6.

- Now read D&C 138:11-24 (or verses 11-37)

24. EASTER

- Candy in baskets, hide baskets somewhere in house; "seek and ye shall find"; “what comfort this sweet sentence gives: I know that my Redeemer lives”

- Devotional: Read scriptures of resurrection (imagine or act out as Mary, Peter or John)

- Cemetery scavenger hunt: look for youngest person, oldest person, favorite name

- Share testimonies with each other of resurrection

- Go sing Easter song to someone who would appreciate it