We are an Easter People Crafts

Today at People, Prayers and Potatoes at St Nicolas Earley we engaged with the Easter Story and the fact that we are an Easter People.

I shared again the Easter Story, focussing on the empty tomb. We spoke about the garden and the gardener and Jesus appearing to Mary and the disciples. We talked about Jesus dieing for us and being resurrected after death. I was blown away, as I always am, by the engagement, knowledge and open acceptance of these truths of our faith by our children and young people; it is a blessing for the adults to witness.

I had planned and bought a range of crafts for the families to experience. For the first time I gave myself a break and bought some bargain items to save my time in this crazy busy time of year. I feel some guilt, but needs must sometimes.

The kids loved the glass painted prayer catcher crosses, they feel so special that they value them and took them home eager to hang them up.

They really liked colouring in the stained glass windows - we found that wax crayon worked really well for this.

The crosses, doves and fish with consatina decorations were a hit with the older ones and Rachel loved putting hearts and crosses on hers.

Everyone helped colour in a wonderful Easter scene and there was lots of ownership of sections going on

A few of the older kids took charge of a joint painting of the empty tomb and I'm really proud of what they've created.

The younger kids enjoyed painting in my pictures of the empty tomb on paper plates - simple and effective.

The activity which none of the kids made was with the crosses and the cups with soil. I thought they'd enjoy planting crosses in the cups but they weren't interested. So I placed crosses into cups and one of the boys told me that the cross was rising from the empty tomb - fab.

This month I also had two interactive activities. The first was making fish by balloon modelling - easy, fun and really symbolic.

The second was writing prayers and hanging them onto a ball to make a new way of sharing our prayers. Never before have the kids do engaged with a prayer writing activity.

All in all we had a great session, the numbers were lower than normal which is to be expected the week after Easter but this meant we had more chance to chat and really engage with each activity which was wonderful. I hope sharing these crafts might help you engage with being a resurrected Easter people.
Enjoy.