Sharing the experience of being a parent, a foreigner, a life-long learner.
☆Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.☆
♡若者を歩むべき道の初めに教育せよ。年老いてもそこからそれることがないであろう。♡ Proverbs 22:6
Every year we do a number of activities during the season of Easter to help the kids really understand the meaning of the celebration. Since we made a trip tot he US just before Easter this year we had a great chance to learn more about some of the cultural aspects connected to Easter which the kids have little to no exposure to in Japan. For, without Christians there is really no reason to have to holiday!
Mega and Zilla enjoyed decorating the Easter Tree at Grandma's house so they were thrilled when we packed up some of the eggs to bring home to our own tree. Mega often redecorated the tree.
These are eggs with Christian Easter designs that I picked up at the dollar store. Zilla enjoyed looking for symbols from the Easter story in the designs while Meg took up the challenge of matching the two sides and then putting them together. Sometimes I would put small "surprizes" inside which added to the fun!
As we approach Ascension Day and Pentecost our time for focusing on Easter is coming to an end for this year. I've already started to round up some of the eggs and other things which seem to be hidden in the nooks and crannies at home. If you are looking for ideas for next here here are a few more of our favorites:
Each egg contains something related to the Easter story. There is an explanatory pamphlet in the box as well as a great activities download on the company homepage.
Zilla loves to paint so I picked on the thing on the left to stick in his basket. It is a paint with water plastic page from CTA. They have similar items for various situations. These are great for toddlers as there is no messy paint to clean up. I think it could work for travel too.
On the right is an Easter countdown calendar. It is the same basic idea as an Advent calendar. Since this was in the Easter basket we didn't use it this year but I'm sure we'll enjoy it next year!
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!
