The road to the cross and the joy of the resurrection
I have shared our day to day morning basket routine in a previous blog post, but as we go through the church year I like to add specific activities that align with the church year calendar. The days before Easter provide us an opportunity for us to be intentional with our kids and bold with our unbelieving neighbors. It’s a time to pour into our children and invite the neighbors over to hunt eggs in the backyard or to your church Lent service. Most importantly, it’s a time to share the story and the joy of the resurrection. By reading the story of the resurrection to your children, we communicate big truths of the gospel—God’s love, our sin, and Jesus’s rescue. This all lays a foundation for their children’s faith. Consistently reading the Bible to your children forms a life-giving habit of Bible reading.
By God’s grace, our kids will spend their lives learning to trust the God to whom this story points. For me, when I first began reading the Bible during our morning basket time, I thought my two year old needed to sit quietly with her legs and hands folded with a lengthly explanation from mom to follow. However, toddlers are active listeners; sometimes they need to move around or hold a toy to listen best and I let the story do its work without much explaining.
Our Lent morning basket routine
This routine takes around 20-30 minutes to complete and we either do it in the morning after breakfast or during our lunch time.
- We begin by reading a Bible story from “The Children’s Bible in 365 stories”. I read them in order and do one story a day. This book is from 1980, but I really appreciate the realistic illustrations as opposed to cartoon illustrations.
- We sing the ABCS and talk about the letter of the day. If the letter is L, we go over the sound and think of all the words that start with “L”. We then read one card from The ABCs of Easter by Tiny Theologians.
- Next, we do a character card from September & Co. If the card is “honesty”, we go over the definition, “I can” statements and the verse of the day.
- We use these resurrection eggs to have a hands-on tangible way of walking through the story of Holy week. It comes with a story book that has a short Bible passage and prompts when to open the egg and asks questions to think and talk about.
- We have a time of worship, using this Youtube playlist and I put out musical instruments for them to practice and explore.
- We close our time in prayer. I often give Lylah and opportunity to pray out loud for our day.
As Easter approaches, set aside times to talk with your kids about Holy week. With the help of the resurrection eggs, you can use this time to ask and discuss the road to the cross and reasons Jesus came to die. As parents, we rarely need to help their kids enjoy a chocolate bunny or an Easter egg hunt. But to help your kids discover fulness of joy in Jesus requires prayer, discipleship and the help of the Holy Spirit. I will share all the links to what we use in my like it to know it account and on my amazon storefront!
