Easter Archives - Homeschool Creations

Easter Story LEGO Challenge

Mar262015

March 26, 2015 by Jolanthe 4 Comments

One of the co-op classes our youngest three are a part of this year is LEGO Challenge. There have been a variety of projects and challenges they have worked on in teams, but this past week was one I wanted to share with you all since it focuses on the Easter story and there is still time for you to work on it with your family.

Proverbial Homemaker has a free Easter Story Lego Challenge for download and the weekly co-op challenge was based on her printables (nope – I didn’t create it, but recommend it to you all).

Our co-op broke the kids up into small groups, and then we started. The kids weren’t given any instruction on how to build the scenes, but we read the Bible stories together and then broke up into teams to create different scenes based on the Scripture that was read. While we didn’t complete all of the scenes and do everything in this challenge as a group, it is something that we are going to work on the week prior to Easter.

Here are a few of the scenes that the kids put together…

Jesus washing the disciples feet….

The Last Supper (looks like a few disciples are missing…)

Jesus offering some BIG bread and wine.

The Garden of Gethsamane – notice Peter passed out next to the sword

the three crosses…

Soldiers guarding the tomb.

peek in the side to see where Jesus’ body is…

An empty tomb!

and the ladies visiting the tomb to find Jesus is gone!

I just LOVE that our kids are able to work together with their friends and be creative, learn along side each other, and also encourage others as they work (the olders with the youngers is fun to watch).

We have boatloads of Legos thanks to Craigslist and some great sets that we’ve purchased from Lego Education, but here are some LEGO suggestions if you are just getting started with Legos.

Now – go grab the Easter Lego Challenge Download before you forget! Thanks to Proverbial Homemaker for a great resource!

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Filed Under: Easter, Holidays, Legos 4 Comments

A Sense of the Resurrection – Easter Activities for Families

Mar62014

March 6, 2014 by Jolanthe 3 Comments

If you are looking for hands-on activities that will help your family internalize all of the events in the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, you’ll want to grab a copy of A Sense of the Resurrection from Oh Amanda.

A Sense of the Resurrection has 12 simple activities that you can do with your children in the weeks leading up to Easter. The activities are hands-on and focused on using the five senses to grasp and understand events like the Last Supper, Jesus’ anointing, the empty tomb and more. It includes printables, Scriptures, and conversation starting points for kids of ALL ages.

Find out more and view a sample of ebook A Sense of the Resurrection here!

Amanda is the creator of Truth in the Tinsel (another fabulous resource for families) and this ebook is another tool that you can put in your teaching toolbelt – and one that will have a lasting impact on your kids!

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Filed Under: Easter 3 Comments

The Legend of the Easter Egg Bag Book

Mar292013

March 29, 2013 by Jolanthe 9 Comments

Preschool and Kindergarten Community at Homeschool Creations

Leave it to a friend to remind me about The Legend of the Easter Egg, a well-loved book in our house, and the lapbook that I put together many years ago and shared at Homeschool Share. Yes, it’s true – I forget some of the printables I make. My brain must be getting old.

Instead of making a lapbook to go along with The Legend of the Easter Egg, we made a bag book. Curious what a bag book is? It’s super simple, I promise:

Lay a stack of small paper bags on top of each other {we alternated four bags top to bottom}
Fold the stack in half {so they form a square booklet}
Punch a few holes along the fold
Tie a ribbon to hold the bags together.

The bags make a small book of sorts and then we added in fun clip art and lapbook pieces to go along with our book. {Here’s an online tutorial for making a bag book}.

While we didn’t use every lapbook piece from the Legend of the Easter Egg unit, we did read the book together almost every day and then picked a few things daily to talk about in more detail: weather, language, feelings, science, etc… It was a great way to talk about Easter and learn together – and most importantly, have fun!

The Parts of an Egg

We have plenty of eggs in our house, so we pulled an egg or two out to crack open and examine. This was a great hands-on time to look at a few parts of the egg: the shell, the yolk, the egg cell, the chalazae, and the albumen {the white}, and that tiny little air sac. There is a great go-along printable for the Legend of the Easter Egg lapbook that we used to label the parts after we poked and inspected our own egg.

EggSperiments

There were three egg experiments that we worked on together. First we hard boiled a LOT of eggs {had to save some to color later in the week!}.

Experiment #1: Which spins faster: a hard boiled egg or a raw egg? We made predictions and then ran our experiment. I can’t tell you the answer – you need to try it for yourself!
Experiment #2: What happens when a hard boiled egg soaks in vinegar for one day? We actually soaked a hard boiled egg and a raw egg in vinegar to see if there would be any difference. Kaleb thought the squishy eggs were MUCH fun to poke, especially when the raw egg ‘popped’ and the shell was all limp on the plate.
Experiment #3: What happens when the egg from Experiment #2 sits out of the vinegar for 24 hours. We’re still waiting to see the results of this one, but Kaleb is checking it faithfully!

Weighing Chocolates

The little boy in story, Thomas, wakes up one morning in a candy shop {literally}. Every child’s dream, right? We pulled out our Chocolate Fix game and used our bucket balance scale to weigh the different chocolates and also compare their weight to other things around the room {crayons, paper clips, etc…}.

We also talked about the symbolism of the Easter egg, telling time as well as days and months of the year, winter weather {hail and freezing rain}, and quite a few other things that we pulled from the book The Legend of the Easter Egg. Overall, a fun week and we’re definitely going to make another bag book again!

This Week’s Featured Posts

Here are a few fun posts from families that linked up last week to the Preschool and Kindergarten Community. I love seeing your ideas and so appreciate you sharing with others!

To go along with the book The Little Rabbit, Angelue from Nestpirations used a cute playdoh mat to work on 1:1 counting with her daughter. She has some other great ideas as well to go along with their unit.

Need some last minute idea for Easter baskets for the kids? Moms Have Questions Too has 125 Inexpensive Easter Basket Ideas to share – and many are things that are non-Easter related, but things your kids still need and use.

Tara from The Magnolia Barn shares a fun egg hunt for sight words that she put together for under $1 for her daughter. Games are a great way to make learning fun!

Resurrection Garden Tutorial 2

We loved putting together this Resurrection Garden last year {this year’s plan to make one got sidetracked when we all came down with a bug}. This is a no-fail way to grow grass and it sprouts quickly!!

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Community. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

Were you featured?

If you were featured in one of the weekly posts, feel free to grab the button coding below and display it on your site!

Time 4 Learning – combining technology with education to make learning fun for kids!

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Filed Under: Easter, Legend of the Easter Egg, PreK and K Community 9 Comments

The Messiah Mystery ~ a Family Lent Study

Feb42013

February 4, 2013 by Jolanthe 18 Comments

Has your family ever observed Lent? Maybe you aren’t quite sure what the Lent season even is {I’ll admit that I wasn’t quite sure myself!!}.

Simply put, Lent is the season leading up to Easter where we anticipate one of the greatest miracles of all – when Jesus willing gave His life for us.

Family Life has put together an amazing resource for families to use during the Lent season – a six session study {one session a week for the 40 days leading up to Lent} where families can search for clues called The Messiah Mystery.

The Messiah Mystery Lent Study

Messiah Mystery - a family study for Lent from FamilyLife.com

The Messiah Mystery study was created by Barbara Rainey at Family Life, so families would have a resource to teach kids the truths about Easter and the ‘clues’ that the Bible shares about Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection long before He was even born.

Each session starts with an optional activity and is then divided up into sections that are read together, questions that are asked and answered, and several clues that are searched for during the lesson. The lessons focus on six places in the Bible where your little sleuths can search: the Garden of Eden, the mountain {with Abraham}, the Desert {the Exodus story and Passover}, the House {the Tabernacle}, the Scrolls {the Dead Sea Scrolls}, and the Vineyard.

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The study is designed to use with a range of ages and is adaptable to the ages of your children. You can have older children participate in the reading, read less for younger children {key paragraphs are in bold print}, and also work on some fun hands-on activities together. There are little ‘clues’ that kids look for in the lessons and need to use a magnifying glass to find. Children keep track of the clues using their ‘clue books’.

The study also includes a numbered paper chain that has forty links. Each day, one of the forty links in the paper chain is removed and added to the go-along poster for the Messiah Mystery. The strips together form one large image that children use to search for a final clue to the Messiah Mystery.

Included in each Messiah Mystery Kit is the following: the family guide, two ‘clue’ books, 40 strips for the paper chain, a magnifying glass, and a poster to add to your wall when putting the strips together.

We are so excited to use this resource with our family this year and know that you all will love it as well!

This post is our honest review of a product that we received for free. All opinions expressed are solely mine.

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Filed Under: Easter, Holidays 18 Comments

How to Make a Resurrection Garden using Wheat Grass

Apr22012

April 2, 2012 by Jolanthe 22 Comments

Want to make a Resurrection Garden, but think you don’t have the time? Wheat grass sprouts overnight and you can have grass in just a few days!! The picture below shows our garden on the fifth day ~ it grows that quickly!

Resurrection Garden Tutorial 2

I know there are so many ideas floating around for Resurrection Gardens, and our kids have been so excited to put ours together this year. The Resurrection Garden is a hands-on reminder of what Easter is really about ~ a visual reminder of the tomb and all that it signifies!

For our Resurrection Garden, we used wheat grass and the results were so much faster than using grass seed {only 2 days!!}. I first tried growing wheat grass {sprouted wheat berries, or grain that is used to make bread} last year, and it was so simple and more lush than standard grass seed! Thanks to a great Easter Grass tutorial from my friend Amanda, it seemed to be the way to go for our Resurrection Garden as well.

How to Make a Resurrection Garden

If you’d like to make your own Resurrection Garden using wheat grass, you’ll need to grab just a few supplies, several that can be found outside.

Potting soil
A large pot base {I picked up a clay base at Walmart}
a small pot {to use as a tomb}
wheat berries ~ can be found at many whole food stores {see tip below}
a rock to cover the mouth of the tomb
small stones/pebbles, if desired
spray bottle
sticks and string to make crosses {we’re adding ours on Good Friday}
large pot {optional}

Quick tip: We grind our own wheat, so I had wheat berries on hand to use. If you don’t have any, you should be able to find some at your local whole foods store ~ or bug a friend who grinds her own wheat! :)

Resurrection Garden-2

1. Soak the wheat berries in water for at least 4 hours or overnight. This will help the wheat berries to sprout quickly!

2. Lay your small pot on its side and fill the large pot base with soil. Arrange the pieces of your Resurrection Garden as you would like ~ stones for a pathway and any other decorations you desire {moss, flowers, etc…}.

3. Gently place the soaked wheat berries on top of the soil, where you would like the grass to grow. Using the spray bottle, spritz the wheat berries thoroughly!

Resurrection Garden-1-3

4. Once the wheat berries have been spritzed well, cover the tray to create a ‘greenhouse’ of sorts. I used a large pot as a dome to keep the moisture inside. Spritz every few hours {well, other than overnight!}.

Resurrection Garden-1-4

5. Watch for sprouts! We placed our wheat berries around 6pm at night and when we took the top off the next morning at 7am, they had already started sprouting! You can now remove the cover off and have your kids spritz it throughout the day ~ keep it moist!

Here’s a look at the fast progress of the wheat grass on the morning of Day 2:

Resurrection Garden-1-5

The morning of Day 3:

Resurrection Garden-2-2

This is the morning of Day 5:

On Good Friday we’re going to add three crosses to the garden and roll the stone over the opening of the tomb {and perhaps have the kids find one that is a wee bit smaller!}.

The kids have really enjoyed putting the together and seeing the grass grow so quickly. It’s been a GREAT visual reminder as well for the Easter season.

We’re also reading Amon’s Adventure by Arnold Ytreeide, which is a daily story you can read together as a family in the days and weeks before Easter. Because we started late, we’re reading several chapters a day, but the kids have loved it, especially since it follows some of the characters in the books we read at Christmas in the Jotham’s Journey series.

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Filed Under: Crafts, Easter Tagged With: Easter, Tutorials 22 Comments

Birds and Easter Fun ~ Preschool Corner

Mar302012

March 30, 2012 by Jolanthe 11 Comments

This week we started a unit on birds with the older kids as part of our science lessons with Nancy Larson Science 2. When Kaleb realized what we were doing, he said that night that he wanted to do birds for his school time as well. He remembered doing some the year before, so I pulled out our Bird Preschool Pack for him to work on and then realized that he was ready for a little more. I’m working on some more printables to use with him next week {and share with you all too!!}, so stay tuned for those!

Learning About Birds

It’s been fun watching our feeder, especially since the weather has been beautiful and we can sit on the screened porch very close to them and hear the birds ‘talk’ to each other. We have some FABULOUS picture cards from Backyard Birds that we can compare to the birds at our feeder. The nuthatch and the cardinal have been the two most common ones lately {pictured below in our Backyard Birds cards}.

A momma cardinal flew right up {and literally into} our window and then sat on the ledge looking right at Kaleb and me for the longest time. Kaleb sat SO very still and just talked to her {so cute} and I didn’t dare move, afraid I would scare her away. Maybe she was a bit dazed from her bump into our glass, but Kaleb had such a close-up look it was great!

New Baby Chicks

This has also been a great time to talk about birds since we have six new chicks living in our basement at the moment. The kids are all loving on them, have built houses for them out of our Guidecraft blocks {complete with colorful water blocks for windows and paper towel floors to catch the poop}.

We are able to talk about the many different characteristics of birds:

What do birds eat {what do our chicks eat and what do other birds eat?}
How do birds get around {flying, walking, climbing, swimming, etc…}
What do all birds have in common {how are the chickens like the birds at our feeder?}
How do some birds differ from others?

Our Easter Projects

Since we’re getting closer to Easter too, I also pulled out our Resurrection Eggs and we’re working on some Easter projects as well, including a Resurrection Garden. Kaleb helped gather rocks and moss for it this week and we are now waiting for our grass to grow as we talk about all of the events leading up to Easter. I know it’s a bit weird to look at right now, but when it sprouts, it will be much fun {this picture was before we added in the moss}. We’re checking it for sprouts all the time!

I’m still waiting for our book Benjamin’s Box to arrive {to go along with the Resurrection Eggs} and we’ll read that together next week along with The Legend of the Easter Egg. Along with that, we’ll continue learning about birds together.

That’s about it for us this week! What have YOU been up to? Please note the NEW website address when you link up this week. If you have a button on your blog, could you grab the coding and help direct people to the new address? Thanks so much!!

Birds and Easter Books

Easter Story LEGO Challenge

A Sense of the Resurrection – Easter Activities for Families

The Legend of the Easter Egg Bag Book

The Parts of an Egg

EggSperiments

Weighing Chocolates

This Week’s Featured Posts

Were you featured?

The Messiah Mystery ~ a Family Lent Study

The Messiah Mystery Lent Study

How to Make a Resurrection Garden using Wheat Grass

How to Make a Resurrection Garden

Birds and Easter Fun ~ Preschool Corner

Learning About Birds

New Baby Chicks

Our Easter Projects

More Preschool Links

Looking for Something?

A Little About Me

All About Spelling Review

All About Reading Review

Nancy Larson Science

Teaching Textbooks Review

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