Easter is less than three weeks away. Have you thought about preparing for Easter celebrations?
We spend so much time preparing and celebrating Christmas that we often neglect Easter. Easter is the most important holiday Christians can celebrate. It’s the day Christ defeats death and offers each of us a way to heaven and God’s family.
What can you do in your homeschool to prepare your family for an awesome Easter celebration? Besides the typical “dye Easter eggs” and “Easter egg hunt”, let’s try these Holy Week homeschool activities.
Check out my 13 ideas in preparing for Easter … All photos are clickable to more details.
- Palm Sunday Paintings
Or try these other Palm Sunday ideas.
Although our kids never did this fun activity, the kids in El Salvador loved it. How often do you get to paint with your feet?
- Easter Garden
You can use live or artificial flowers to make your garden. This is an excellent object lesson for kids of all ages.
- Spend evenings reading the Bible story
Advent has advent readings, but few families have a reading schedule for Easter. The link above offers both a reading schedule and an Easter Bible study for families to do each evening.
- Make or buy a set of Resurrection Eggs that tell the Easter story.
When our kids were young, they would open each egg and tell the Easter story using the item inside the egg. It really helped our kids know the events of Passion Week.
- Write the Easter story in their own words
Use Teaching Writing Unit 3 or WriteShop to help your kids write the Easter story.
.. - Teach the 5 senses as your kids enjoy Sense of the Resurrection
- Read the Bible during Passion Week with our Bible Reading Plan
- Make Resurrection Rolls on Saturday night …
… Bake on Sunday morning
My kids still asked if we were making Resurrection Rolls when they were in college. I guess this truly became a family tradition. One with a message.
- Read Easter books Aloud or Individually.
I highly recommend reading Vinegar Boy aloud, a family favorite. You will be transported back into the time of Jesus as you read this narrative of the Easter story from the vinegar boy’s perspective. It is an excellent book that I’ve enjoyed re-reading as an adult.
Just like Christmas, you can integrate your Easter celebration into your homeschool. Choose a few books today. Order them on amazon and you’ll have them in two days…ready for Passion Week.Here are 2 lists you might want to use to get started.
- Use Easter Hymns in your Homeschool
In our homeschool, we often began our day singing a hymn because I wanted my kids to learn some of the Christian songs that I sang growing up. Pick one hymn each week and sing it in the morning as you start school.
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Use Easter hymns as Copywork or Dictation or Narration activities
Print out the lyrics below for copywork or dictation.
For narration, sing one verse of a hymn. Allow your kids to narrate back to you what the hymn is about. Older students can write a paragraph with thoughts about the hymn.
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Here are a few Easter hymns you might choose:
Christ the Lord is Risen Today:
Traditional Version Modern Version Lyrics for Copywork
In Christ Alone: Lyrics for Copywork
I Will Rise: Lyrics for Copywork
.. - Share the Jelly Bean Prayer with friends
Let your kids prepare the Jelly Bean Prayer to share with their friends. When the neighbor kids are over to play, send them home with one of your jelly bean prayer. Your kids might want to share the meaning with their friends.
- Prepare and Eat Foods of the Passover on Maundy Thursday
- Easter Feast on Easter Sunday
Invite friends over for an Easter feast. If you don’t enjoy cooking…or you’re unsure about having friends over for Easter, ask your guests to each bring a dish. Use your crockpot to cook a roast or ham or chicken. It will be ready when you get home from church.
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All you’ll need to do is provide drinks and set the table.What a perfect opportunity to involve your kids by having them set the table and offer drinks. Such a simple way to model hospitality for your kids.
Get your FREE Bible Reading Plan to stay focused on Jesus during Easter. Super simple to use. Print & Go.
While my kids were growing up, we read specific Scripture during Holy Week so we prepared their heart for Resurrection Sunday. Just sign up below and we’ll send your printable to your inbox.
Preparing for Easter is easy when you have a few ideas at your fingertips. I hope these ideas help you spend time together as a family worshiping Jesus, our Risen Savior. Please leave comments with any ideas you use in preparing for Easter with your own family.
Question: How do you celebrate Easter? How are you preparing for Easter this year?
You can leave a comment by clicking here.
26 Comments
We are doing a Sense of the Resurrection and reading Easter picture books. We normally make a set of Resurrection eggs, too.
Those are all great ideas to help stay focused on the real reason for Easter. Thanks for sharing
Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. We are making an Easter Garden and buying a lily. Now I want to incorporate some of these too…well, all of them actually, but I think I had better start small.
I love Easter lilies…After Easter, I would look at the parts of the flower. Not really a way to bring Christ into Easter, but a fun way to learn more about flowers.
Starting small is a great way to start. I usually recommend choosing 1-2 ideas to implement this year and see how it goes with your family
Lots of great ideas! I have done resurrection eggs and the jelly bean prayer in the past. We are buying new bibles for each of our kids this year.
I love the new Bible idea. We did that one year for our own kids. Fantastic!
Im originally from Ukraine and our tradition is to bake Kulich which is Easter bread, color eggs and most importantly talk what Easter is really all about, acknowledge Jesus’s resurrection!
Do you color your eggs like Ukrainian eggs? I’ve seen gorgeous pictures. I’m so glad the eggs are associated with Jesus’ resurrection. Thanks for sharing
I love all your ideas for Easter. I love doing crafts with my children on all the holidays.
Thanks for your nice comment. Let me know what crafts you do for Easter this year
I typically celebrate by going to church and then spending time with family. Sometimes we dye eggs. Usually we do some type of Egg hunt and Easter “baskets”. The baskets are typically not baskets. Last year they were rain boots. I am thinking of trying to do a resurrection garden this year if we can figure out where to purchase wheat grass seeds locally.
Love the rain boots idea. If you get a picture, please share it. I’d love to see how it looks. Good luck finding wheat grass seeds. Would like to see your garden, as well
We will have to add the resurrection rolls this year. We usually do cookies, but these look yummy
Hey there, Rebecca. I am looking forward to catching up with you at Teach Them Diligently in Atlanta. Prayers to you…Enjoy the rolls.
My family celebrates both Easter and Passover. This doubles the excitement and anticipation. We celebrate the Jewish roots and heritage of our Christian faith. Best of both!
I have the Passover plate above and loved using it with my kids when they still lived at home.
Thank you for these ideas. Since we have chosen to leave the Easter Bunny and eggs out of our celebration it has been hard to find true ideas for celebrating Easter.
Glad we could help. Let me know which idea you use this year and how it goes. I’d love your feedback.
We spend time with family, celebrate Christ’s resurrection
I love spending time with my family at Easter. They are the people I want to share my time with
I spend time with my family.
Perfect way to celebrate Easter
We like to make hot cross buns and go to church on Easter. We had done a scaled down version of the Passover meal a few years ago and my daughter wants to do it again.
Hot cross buns…I remember making those with the kids. Enjoy them. Let me know if you do a Passover meal and how it goes
We bake together. We study the Resurrection together for the whole week. We go over the jelly bean prayer. We go to a Good Friday Service as well as church on Easter. We talk about what Jesus did over the whole week, repeatedly.
Sounds great. What do y’all bake? We always baked resurrection rolls. My kids still ask for them.