Easter Activities

One of my favorite things to do with the kids is prepare them for an upcoming church celebration.  The past couple of months we had the time of Lent, Holy Week and now the season of Easter.  As the Easter season starts on Easter Sunday and continues for a few weeks we have plenty of time to play, discuss, read and learn.

 A yearly activity at church is Easter egg dying where we talk about the Easter story and explain that the egg is one of many Easter symbols.
With much thoughtfulness a bunch of white eggs turn into this:

One tradition we keep is hunting of a basket full of goodies.  Of course there is candy from the US (Japan hasn''t caught on to Easter...) as well as books, activities and even a VeggieTales DVD which help the kids to learn more about why we celebrate Easter.  This year we also put together little bags for their cousins and a couple of friends at church. I think Zilla had as much fun preparing and handing those out as he did searching for his own basket!

We've been doing many things at home and I hope to get posts going with some of those too.  Below is a favorite activity. Five eggs are filled with various noise making items.  There are two different kinds of coins, rice, salt and seeds.

These have been on Mega's shelf and she plays with them at least a couple of times each day.  Yesterday we added to shaking to some music and she just lit up!