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How to Make a Resurrection Garden using Wheat Grass

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!

 

Resurrection Garden-1

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…}.

 

Resurrection Garden-3

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:

photo

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.

image

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.

Birds and Easter Fun ~ Preschool Corner

This week we started a unit on birds with the older kids as part of our sciencePreschool Corner 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}.

Backyard Birds-1

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

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

Resurrection Garden-3

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!!

 

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