Holy Week

Happy Palm Sunday! We are having a lot of fun this Easter season so far! Our church is putting on an Easter drama portraying the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and we are participating as a family. Mark is playing the drums for the live band and the girls and I are participating in the crowd scenes.

In the recent months God has pressed upon my heart to begin preparing for conversations about salvation with Reaghan. She is only 3 and I know her understanding of sin and salvation are limited, but even so, I've been looking for resources and tips on explaining salvation to her. I am so glad that God began preparing me before I knew why! He knew what was coming in Reaghan's heart because she has expressed a lot of questions and thoughts the last several weeks since we've been practicing for the play... "Why is Jesus on the cross?" "Why are they hurting him?" "That makes me sad." "I wish he was okay." "How will Jesus come out of the tomb if the rock is there?"  These have lead to sweet discussions introducing my girl to the concept of Salvation through Jesus' death and resurrection.

To keep her thoughts turned towards Jesus this week we decided to add something interactive during our nightly bible reading. We usually read out of the Jesus Storybook bible during our morning "school" routine and another children's bible in the evenings, but I found a Holy Week reading schedule using the Jesus Storybook Bible from Erin over at Home with the Boys so we are going to use that for our nightly family bible readings this week. We made a Holy Week calendar to go with it so after each reading Reaghan can glue paper cut outs or draw a picture that corresponds with the event in the story. I'm totally being lazy right now and just snapped a picture of it while sitting on the couch writing this post, but here it as after our first reading tonight! (I found the original inspiration here from pinterest... this blogger is longer blogging but her site is still up for reference.)

Reaghan loved it and is anticipating how we will fill each square. I love that when I showed her the biggest square for Easter and asked her if she remembered what happened on that day she answered, "That's when Jesus comes alive again!" We are going to keep it on our fireplace this week so it is front and center!

I have a lot of Easter Printables saved on my Pinterest Board for Reaghan to color and complete this week during our school hour to help build her anticipation for Easter. I love using Pinterest as a resource for these types of things! I really want to cultivate a spirit of excitement for Easter in our home that is similar to that at Christmas time!

How do you celebrate Holy Week? I'd love more ideas!