Last Supper- Plastic Chalice Craft

For our third week of Easter, we focused on the Last Supper. 

For our craft project, we had the students design their own chalice, imagining what they would have presented to Jesus had they been present at the supper.

I purchased plastic champagne glasses at the Dollar Tree in our town (6 glasses for $1.00).  I also purchased some Easter stickers from the Dollar Tree as well.

In our class, we retold another version of the Easter story.  We discussed the Sacrament of Communion, and presented our sample project.

We had the kids practice lining up and bowing before the cup, with their arms crossed (as our kids do not yet take communion yet) and had them practice going up for a blessing and showing reverance to the Sacarament.

For our craft, each child was given a plastic champagne cup.  We used permanent markers, and let the kids color the cups to make them look like either stained glass or jeweled in their appearance, and let them add stickers for fun.  Given we do many coloring crafts, these were a hit as it was something easy to do.  For our youngest preschoolers, we skipped the permanent markers and let them just apply stickers.

 

Palm Sunday-- Paper Palms and Pin the Tail on the Donkey

For our second week of learning about Easter, we focused on Palm Sunday.

We made paper Palm Leaves from the book Easy Christian Crafts, PK-K.  This book features reproducible activities, including a two page palm leaf that our student cut out and taped together (we had it copied onto green paper).

For our game, we purchased a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game, and added an picture of Jesus to the donkey to represent Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. 

Resurrection Eggs and Printable Link!

Each year, we use the Resurrection Eggs to retell the Easter story.  These are sold in a carton, and inside each plastic egg is a symbol from the Easter story.  They aren't Catholic specifically, but can be found in any Christian book store (we got ours at Family Bookstore in Bellingham, WA).  We usually tie this lesson in with a Stations of the Cross coloring book, or one year purchased plastic eggs and made Stations of the Cross eggs in class.  We tell the story at circle time, and pass each egg around to each student as we tell the story.

This year, I found an awesome resource over at www.teachinghearts.net, another site that describes using the Resurrection Eggs in class.  Additionally, this site has an awesome FREE printable file folder game with flip open Resurrection eggs to make and take home.  Our plan is to use this activity along with the eggs, and save the Stations for another week during lent.

The Teaching Hearts printable was a bit complicated for our Kindergarten and First Graders, so we modified it slightly.  We only distributed the blank folding eggs, folders and the 12 symbol circles, plus the cover and explanation page to each student.  (We left out the fancy egg number covers and narratives for each egg).  We just had the kids number the eggs 1-12 and decorate them on their own, eliminating some of the cutting and gluing.

The Good Shepard- Craft and Free Printable Lesson Plan

During the Easter Season, we  study the teaching from the Gospel on the Good Shepard.

I'd like to say the sheep pictured was created by one of our K-1 kids, but I'll confess that this is my work and my husband's work.

We found a cute craft on the Family Fun website using a real brown egg.  For our class, I decided it would be fun to make a version out of a plastic egg.  We purchased larger plastic eggs in the Easter clearance section of the drug store, and a small can of brown spray paint.  We pre-spray painted our eggs and let them dry.  (We ran out of paint and used some acrylic paint of a similar color (hence the multi-toned face here).  We drew on the eyes with permanent marker, and attached the legs by making a small oval out of half of a black pipe cleaner.  We then used two more half pipe cleaners to cross the oval and make four little legs (essentially a stand for the egg).  We then attached the egg with glue, and glued on cotton balls and paper ears to finish the sheep.

We rounded out our lesson plan (I actually made a formal lesson plan, which you can find here or on our free printables page) with a puppet show on the Good Shepard with a sheep and person puppet that we found at Michael's Craft Store, and used some of the other puppets we have in our classroom.  We have been building up a puppet collection using garage sales and the Goodwill and have a wolf puppet in our possession already).  We also used some coloring pages, and a prayer to the good shepard, all included in the lesson plan.

Divine Mercy Sunday

For Divine Mercy Sunday, we started the class off with having the kids color St. Faustina while all of the kids arrived.  Click here to go to a free coloring page sheet on Saint Faustina.com.

We then moved to circle time, and passed out a rosary to each child.  In the center of our circle we had a small white cloth and an easter candle to celebrate the season.

We told the kids about the ABC's of the Divine Mercy...

A:  Ask for His Mercy; B:  Be Merciful; C:  Completely Trust in Jesus.

We prayed the beginning and one decade of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  I put together some info I found on the internet here as a Divine Mercy Chaplet take-home sheet. 

Finally, we created the craft pictured above, with toilet paper rolls and the cute print out design from Catholic Icing.  Instead of fan folding the blue and red light streams, we used my Fiskars paper crimper, which the kids loved using.

Empty Tomb Easter Centerpiece

My 6 year old's sample

Picture of Book Cover

During Lent this year, we worked on telling the Easter story and the story of the Stations of the Cross and Holy Week during most of our lessons.

Last week, I found a new book at the local Family Christian Bookstore in my area. It is called "Paper Plate Christian Crafts" by Maxine Kenny (link below)

Paper Plate Christian Crafts (Amazon)

We adapted one of the crafts, Jesus Arose, on pg. 111, for our classroom to create Easter centerpieces. These were fairly simple and fun to put together.

I purchased the "bare" Solo brand bowl-type of square plates from the store. For the empty tomb, we had the kids crumpled up 1 or 2 sheets of gray copy paper and make it into a cave type shape. I affixed these with hot glue for the kids. They then cut out a circle from gray cardstock for the rock that rolled away to reveal the empty tomb, and glued to the side of the cave with regular elmer's-type glue.

We used the shapes from the book (Angel, Tree and Mary Magdelene) and had the kids affix thes with elmer's glue (small tabs at the bottom bent backwards allowed them to stand. We then set up a table with all sorts of accessories (stuff we had around the house--craft moss, felt, craft rocks, etc.) and let the kids create their landscapes using more elmer's glue. We ended up with quite the assortment.

At the end of class, we had the kids retell the short story of what happened when the women (including Mary Magdelene) went to the tomb on Easter morning. My six-year old daughter's version is photographed here.