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Holy Week

watercolor crosses

We did a trial run of Palm Sunday on Saturday morning, so that the kids would be familiar with the celebrations come Sunday morning. (In the end, they all stayed home sick on Sunday. Boo.) I traced their hands on green paper, cut them out, and taped them to popsicle sticks: instant palms! (Palms. Hands. Get it?)


Isaac read them the Palm Sunday account first, and showed them the map of Jerusalem to illustrate how Jesus entered the city.



And then the fun part: throwing sweatshirt jackets on the floor, for the Daddy-donkey to walk on! Later, Silas played Jesus and rode in on Isaac's back. Levi ran in circles around them shouting hosanna, while Owen followed along behind pleading to ride on the donkey. Happy chaos.


On Monday, we started a tomb project. Step one: paint the top side of a paper plate black. Later in the day, we painted the bottom side brown. (I only had red paper plates. Thanks for supporting this craft, Papa John's.)


While we waited for the black paint to dry, we played a game from this packet: roll a die, and cover up that many crosses with the picture of resurrected Jesus. Owen is doing much better this year at both taking turns and one-to-one correspondence; this sort of game is perfect for him right now!

Pro tip: roll dice into a shallow plate so it doesn't fly all over the room.


Is this not the most ridiculous representation of Jesus you've ever seen?!

From the same packet, I printed do-a-dot number recognition and addition pages (for Owen and Levi, respectively). Owen's solid on numbers 1-12, but I wasn't sure how certain he was on the teens, so this page is numbers 11-20. I simply called out a number for him to dot. Turns out he knows them all! I didn't take a picture of Levi's, but he had to roll two dice, add them up, and dot the correct number. 


On Tuesday, we did the next step in our tomb project. I cut the plates in half and cut a door out of one half, then the boys helped me glue them together, black side in.



On Good Friday, we did the old paint-over-masking-tape trick. I did one, too, so that we could hang all three crosses up on the wall. (Picture at the top of this post.)


Then I gave them the cross outline page from the packet linked above, taped to a sheet of construction paper, and a pushpin. The goal was to poke tiny holes along the outline of the cross, so that light would shine through and make the cross visible. Levi was meticulous. Owen's resembles more of a starry night than a cross. ;) After they finished, we took the poked construction paper and a flashlight into the dark bathroom to see the results.

Pro tip: poke the holes on carpet, so you don't have to worry what's underneath the paper.

After nap time on Good Friday, Isaac read the burial account. We wrapped clothespin people in a scrap of white cloth (Isaac's old t-shirts, recycled for other purposes), put Jesus in the tomb, and rolled a paper-bag stone in front.


preparing Jesus for burial

Jesus in the tomb

sealed with a stone

Up next: Easter!
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