As we approach Easter season and Easter Sunday, and people all around are sharing the story of Easter and beginning their Easter traditions, I wanted to share some activity pages to help!
Often, people ask me to recommend a short Easter story for kids, and inside this bundle I do even better than that! There is a book list inside this Easter bundle with more than 10 of our favourite Easter picture books.
What Age Children Is This For?
This Easter bundle can be used with your young children, right up until about grade 6. There are a variety of activity pages, writing pages and reading response pages in here so there is something for all your elementary and younger aged kids.
Give your preschooler a colouring page while you are having your grade 3 student do an Easter acrostic poem and your grade 6 student write a retelling of the Easter story! Choose a short Easter story for kids from my list of picture books to read out loud while your kids colour and then have your school age kids do a reading response form that is appropriate for their age.
You can even have your younger kids narrate the parts of the story to you as you scribe for them into their story map! There are endless possibilities for you with this bundle.
Is This Only For Christians?
While the bundle is created for those who celebrate Easter from a religious standpoint as well as those who don’t, my family recognizes the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the real meaning of Easter.
There is more than enough for you to use in this bundle if you prefer to focus on Easter eggs, the Easter bunny and candy. Most of the activity pages surround these things and some of the easter stories on the book list. However if you want to talk about the good news of Jesus Christ with your kids, you will get the opportunity for that as well, with such activities as a blank space for retelling the Easter story.
One of the recipes even includes a fun way to use it as an object lesson about the story of Jesus and his death and resurrection! You may or may not have heard of resurrection rolls before and how you can use them to illustrate this very important Bible story. I share the recipe, as well as the teaching points of how it demonstrates an empty tomb, at the end of the bundle.
Easter Picture Books
Here are some awesome short Easter stories for kids to read leading up to, and during, this special weekend. You’ll find more on the book list in my Easter bundle!
The Donkey That No One Could Ride
“The Donkey That No One Could Ride” is an excellent book to read on Palm Sunday, to begin holy week. This sweet little rhyming story reminds us of the donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem and how God can use anyone. He loves us all!
The Tale Of Three Trees
If you are looking for a short Easter story to help your kids understand the true meaning of Easter, I would suggest “The Tale of Three Trees”. This sweet and beautiful book tells the story of three trees who have certain wishes for how they will be used. In the end, all three of them are used in important ways in the life of the Son of God.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it does tie in to Easter in the end. My kids love this one. You can read it any time but it would be a great one for Good Friday!
The Garden, The Curtain and The Cross
“The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross” is a beautiful book that shares the full gospel story. This colourfully illustrated book takes the reader through the entire story from creation to a new Heaven and Earth to show how God’s plan is woven throughout it all. It discusses the life of Jesus and why that was necessary.
This is a great book to read at home or even in kids ministry on Easter Sunday. I love this one because I think it is so important for our kids to know that the Bible isn’t just an anthology of random stories but that they are all knit together to show God’s perfect plan to rescue His people.
The Legend of the Candy Cane
If you enjoy “The Legend of the Candy Cane” at Christmas time, you must read “The Legend of the Easter Egg”. It has a light crossover of characters, and a similar feel, although much more emotional. In warning incase you have a sensitive child, the sister in this story gets scarlet fever. She is quite sick and the brother has to go stay somewhere else for a while.
The first time we read it, one of my daughters was quite nervous that the sister was going to die. I hate to give you a spoiler, but she does not.
The book uses the Easter eggs to represent Jesus’ body breaking out of the tomb. Even the heavy stone, like the egg shell, couldn’t hold him. No matter how these kids storybooks choose to tell the story, the key thought is still the same. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He died, was buried and rose again on the third day. To that I say “hallelujah”!
Easter Traditions
One Easter “tradition” that we have is to put our Easter baskets out on Saturday morning and leave the next day, Easter morning, as a day to focus on God’s love and the resurrection and death of Jesus. This way the kids aren’t so focused on their Easter baskets that that is all they can think about. While I know many Christians decide to avoid the Easter basket tradition completely and celebrate in different ways, this is something that has been a nice happy medium for us. I love Easter time!
It’s no secret we have lived many different places and therefore have experienced many different ways people celebrate Easter, and I think one of our favourites is the early Sunday morning sunrise service where we live now. It is so special to gather together in the chilly air and watch a beautiful sunrise as we focus on Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for us as believers. The Holy Spirit always feels so present during that early morning time of worship.
Before I end, I truly believe any Easter post would be lacking if I didn’t mention that knowing Bible stories is great, but it is what believing in the Lord that gives you the gift of eternal life. Just knowing the stories isn’t enough, we must make the choice to believe in God and have Him as Lord of our life. I am always happy to talk to anyone who wants to know more about that!
If you’re looking for tips on how to bring more reading into your home, check out this post I wrote on How to Cultivate a Culture of Reading in Your Home.
Happy Easter friends!
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