Lent + Easter

The Easter Story is central to the Christian faith, and one that we can find difficult to navigate with children. Lent is the season of preparation for Easter and lasts for 40 days, beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Saturday - the day before Easter Sunday.

Here are some ideas to help you journey through lent, reflect on the events of the crucifixion, while celebrating the joy and wonder of the resurrection.

Strandz Intergenerational Lenten Studies

A Sent People

Our Transforming God

Lent

Shrove Tuesday

Messy Church Pancake Day ideas and worship ideas from a church in the States
What do pancakes have to do with Lent?
Shrove Tuesday games and pancake activities here
Celebrating Shrove Tuesday by Kidsfriendly
Pancake Recipes from Edmonds!

Lent

What is Lent all about? Restart Website have some great background information on lent
Strandz 2017 Lent Study - Our Transforming God, a 6 part family study on Transformation, using family friendly films and discussion questions
Messy Church in Lent
40 Acts: Do Lent Generously - 40 days of giving back, doing good and living generously.
Flame Creative have made booklet to help families engage with Lent this year
Two great ideas from Rev. Jemma Allen in Howick on how to celebrate Easter - “Burying the Alleluia” and a Lenten pathway (pdf).
Going4Growth website (Anglican children's ministry UK) has some good ideas and links
A family repentance box, from Ann Voskamp
Diocese of Winchester Lent Course (videos below)
Caritas Lent resources with ideas for highlighting social justice. They also have a great Keep It Simple Calendar 2018 (4.77 MB)
Auckland Diocese have put together an online Lent Calendar

Palm Sunday

Messy Church Palm Sunday ideas, including edible donkey poo and 'palm sundaes'!
The Lost Sheep have produced a story called Dave the Donkey, which works really well for Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday story from BRF
Easter Palms for Holy Week from BRF

Holy Week

Easter Week Journey

Holy Week Boxes
'What's in the Bible' summarises what Holy week is all about, with explanations for each day. Includes colouring in sheets and info
Our friends in the Children and Families team at SUNZ have put together a whole host of Easter resources on their blog, including a 'Journey to Easter' with reflections on the journey Jesus made to the cross.
The Faithful Families website outlines a great way to get the whole family engaged in the journey of Easter week - includes daily stations/symbols, and questions to ask your kids each day.
Footsteps to the Feast for Holy Week
Punctuation Marks Presentation
The Sounds of Easter Week
Emmaus Road Service ideas for Easter Sunday
Walking through Holy Week
Holy Week Visual Aid with paper
Easter Story Animations from the Bible Society Aus - animations for both school and church settings
A Lego journey through Holy Week
Illustrations from Henri Martin
An Easter Trail from Bible Society, using resources from 'The Super Cool Story of Jesus'
Our Strandz article in the Anglican Taonga magazine on Easter. (pages 28-29)

Maundy Thursday

Footwashing story and presentation

Good Friday

Wrapping the Cross - a Good Friday Service
A Good Friday Service for all
An All Age service from BRF for Good Friday - traditionally a sombre and difficult service to include kids at.
Presentation on Good Friday/Easter through noughts and crosses
Reinacting four scenes of Good Friday in a family service
A creative all-age Good Friday service for families to engage with
A short talk using 3 props: a wash bowl, sponge and dice
A stunningly illustrated video from Grace Vineyard retelling the story of Good Friday, told by children in Christchurch.

Stations of the Cross

Stations of the cross ideas for children on Family Feast and Feria website
Samuel Marsden School in Wellington have put together a Stations of the Cross resource which contains readings (docx file) and images (ppt file)
Prayer station ideas for each Station of the Cross
Illustrated Children's Ministry Stations of the cross - colouring posters and a devotional.
Stations of the Cross video - narrated by children, from the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.

"This is a very sad story. It is about the one day in Jesus' life, so its not the whole story about Jesus. Even though the story has a happy ending, it is important to remember what happened on that day"
Stations of the Cross, Episcopal Church of Texas

Make

Craft and Activities

Printable figures and scenes by My Little House - a very popular resource for Christmas! (we had over 33k views of our link to their nativity on Facebook)
Easter Crafts and more ideas here

Resurrection Eggs

Using symbols to unpack the Easter story - a creative way to engage children of all ages. Symbols could include a leaf, donkey, small cup, coins, thorn, fabric, nail, dice, cross, stone, and the last one is empty.
Other symbols and instructions can be found here
You can simplify the eggs for preschoolers, like this one here

Make and Easter Garden
Our friends at St Stephens Tamahere put together some great instructions for making an Easter Garden. Download it here (pdf)

Old Rugged Cross
This beautiful Easter decoration will help you and your family remember Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection