Good Friday + No School = A Great Day!

I was pretty excited when I realized that there there was no school on Good Friday this year.  Don't get me wrong, a day off from our normal morning routine is always welcome, but I was so glad to have a day with my kids to really focus on Easter and what we were are celebrating before all the busy-ness of the weekend takes over. 

We have made Resurrection Rolls every year, and this year was no exception so we started the morning off with an old favorite. I have included a short tutorial below in case these are new to you!

First, you need to gather your ingredients: 1 can of refrigerator crescent rolls, marshmallows, melted butter or margarine and cinnamon/sugar mix.

Roll the marshmallow in the melted butter and then in the cinnamon sugar mix.  Explain that the marshmallow represents the body of Christ being prepared and anointed with oils & spices.

Next, place the marshmallow onto 1 section of the dough and wrap it tight to represent Christ's body being wrapped in fine linens before being placed into the tomb. 

(I let the kids wrap their own, but then went back and tried to pinch together all the seams, so the marshmallow wouldn't leak out.)

You then place your prepared rolls into the tomb (oven) and bake according to the directions on the package.

Finally, remove from oven, let cool and break open to reveal the tomb is empty and Christ is Risen!

This is a really quick & easy way to show young kids the story of Easter and we love it. Our rolls took about 12 minutes to bake, so I read the Easter story from the Gospel of Mark while we waited for them to finish. Logan is still a little young for this, but Max is plenty old enough to sit still for a few minutes and think about the true meaning of Easter. I hope you find the time to do this project with your kidlets this weekend!

I have seen several versions of an Easter Garden online recently (Thank you, Pinterest), but I have never made one, so I decided that this would be the year to make these adorable creations.  That being said, I planned on actually starting this project weeks ago so that I could use real grass seed for a real garden where something actually grows....but I dropped the ball.  I never did get the grass seed or soil, so last night I ran to our local Dollar Tree store and picked up some moss to use instead.  I think they still turned out great!

Here is another quick tutorial for our Easter gardens if you are interested in making one of your own. For each garden, you need 1 shallow tray or dish, 1 small pot, small rocks or pebbles, moss, poms poms, 1 decorative butterfly and a hot glue gun.

I was able to get all my supplies at the Dollar Tree, so we were able to make 3 full gardens for only $6.00!

First off, we decided to paint our trays with some spray paint I had on hand because they were clear and had bright orange stickers on the side that I couldn't get off.

Next, I attached each pot (which came in gray, how perfect!) to the tray using a hot glue gun and then let the kids spread rocks around the front half of their tray.

Once each of them had the rocks laid out, I helped them spread moss around the back half of the tray and then covered the top of the pot with hot glue and spread more moss on top.  I didn't glue everything down, partly for time's sake and mostly because I would like to disassemble them as much as possible to store and re-use them next year.

Finally, I let the boys pick out which pom poms they wanted me to use to make their caterpillar out of, hot glued them together and placed them in the pot.

I still need to look around today for something to use as the stone in front of the tomb, so that we can close it up and wait for Easter morning when a beautiful butterfly will emerge to replace the caterpillar as a sign of the Resurrection and new life!

I had a lot of fun with this project and I think the boys did, too!