Enter the Mystery of Easter
Today marks the first Sunday in Lent, which means the Easter season has already begun! Our friends at the Godly Play Foundation, providers of so many invaluable educational resources all year round, offer some wonderful ways for families deepen their experience of Lent at home, and we’d like to share one of those with you today: a story called The Mystery of Easter.
First, watch the “official” Godly Play version of this story on YouTube.
This story incorporates the idea that Easter is such a big mystery, it takes six whole weeks to get ready to come close to it – that’s an even bigger mystery than Christmas! Each week of Lent is represented by a puzzle piece, and when you put them all together, they make a cross. A lot is made of the question of what the pieces will create, so as you watch the story together, be sure to remind any young people who have already heard it not to spoil the ending for everyone else.
The puzzle pieces are purple on one side and white on the other, because Lent is sad and serious, but Easter is pure celebration – and it takes sadness AND happiness together to make joy. This leads to some really lovely “wondering” questions at the end of the story, which include things like “I wonder if you have ever seen these colors in church?” and “I wonder where joy comes from?” Spend some time with these questions – pause the video and talk about each one together. You might be surprised at the depth of the answers you receive, even from younger kids.
Then...make your own puzzle! You may want to glue together two different colors of paper, but you can also just color one side of the paper purple. Here’s a template in case you’d like some help drawing your cross. You can cut your six pieces however you’d like – no matter what shapes you create, the pieces will still fit together!
Perhaps, after you’ve made your puzzle, you’ll decide to tell the story again without the video, working together to create the cross; in fact, you might find that the more you tell the story, the closer you get to the mystery of Easter. As an added bonus, working with puzzles helps kids with motor skills and cognitive development, so if there are any other big ideas you’d like to explore together, you can create a puzzle to help you put the pieces together, both literally and figuratively.
Share your homemade puzzles with us on our Facebook page. And join us next week as we continue on our journey through the serious, celebratory, joyful time of Easter.
