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The season of Easter:  Easter Day   The Great 50 Days
 
Lent   Holy Week   Good Friday   Holy Saturday   Great Vigil of Easter
 

Creativity

Make a posterboard cross, and add decorations such as paper flowers and leaves every week of the Easter season.

Outdoors

Cut blooms from your garden to enjoy in a vase indoors. Plant flowers or vegetables and tend the garden together.
 
Find a creek or river and enjoy the moving water. During a rainstorm, make the house quiet, sit, and listen to the rain.
 

Music

Sing "The Light of Christ / Thanks be to God," from the Easter vigil, with your children, especially while lighting candles before a meal. You may know it as "Lumen Christi."

Play

Tell stories of our family members' baptisms. Take a moment at church to see the baptismal font up close. Enjoy playing out baptisms.

Food

Make a rich Easter bread together to enjoy on Sunday each week of the Easter season.

Traditions

Have a decorated cross or light a special candle at the table for family meals throughout the Easter season. Continue this tradition on Sundays after the Easter season.
 
Notice with your children that the blessed water you might cross yourself with when you enter church is "like" the water of your baptism.
 

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Easter: 50 Days & Sundays, too

Easter Day is certainly the most important day of the church year. The celebration of Easter begins during the Great Vigil of Easter after nightfall on Holy Saturday, continues through Easter Sunday and into the Easter season, a full 50 days, until Pentecost.

The Great 50 Days of Easter are a wonderful opportunity to explore and celebrate Easter more fully than we can possibly squeeze into a single day.

A wonderful part of the richness of Easter to enjoy with children is light and candles. From the first fire, lit before the beginning of the Easter vigil, to the Paschal candle, the altar candles, and our baptismal candles, light is a sign and symbol that can be enjoyed and noticed to lay the groundwork for later intellectual understanding.

What child doesn't love to see and hear water? Baptism has been a very important part of Easter liturgy for centuries, and baptism is a lot of fun to explore with kids. Again, spend time noticing, wondering about, playing with, and creating with water.

When the Easter season draws to a close at Pentecost, we can continue our Easter celebrations by narrowing the focus to Sundays, just as the early church did. Each Sunday is a weekly celebration of Easter. Each week we celebrate the risen Christ, the Light of the World, and remember our baptism. This is a wonderful foundation for a family life of faith and for holy days and church seasons. Let's celebrate Easter!

Barbara Laufersweiler is an at-home mom, an Episcopalian, and the creator of Faith at Home, http://www.faith-at-home.com, a Web site offering help to parents as they explore and enjoy faith with their children. Copyright © 2001 Barbara K. Laufersweiler. All rights reserved.
 

Resources

Articles

"Sundays Are Worth the Effort"

Books

Celebrating the Church Year with Young ChildrenCelebrating the Church Year with Young Children, by Joan Halmo. A wonderful guide for parents, giving background and then a wealth of ideas for each season and holy day throughout the liturgical year, in order of importance: Sunday, Easter, Holy Week, and so on. Lots of great ideas! A Faith at Home must-have book.

Before and After Easter: Activities and Ideas for Lent to Pentecost, by Debbie O'Neal.


To Dance With GodTo Dance with God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration, by Gertrud Mueller Nelson. Another superb resource for parents. Lots of ideas for faith-based activities for daily family life as well as seasonal and yearly observances from Christmas to birthdays, Lent to St. Nicholas' Day. A Faith at Home must-have book.


Living in God's Time: A Parent's Guide to Nurturing Children throughout the Christian Year, by Margaret Persky.


 

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Copyright © 2001-2012 Barbara Laufersweiler
Last updated April 18, 2012

URL: http://www.faith-at-home.com/tips/easter50.html