Easter & Lent Material - Experience Lent and Easter with Children

March 5th, 2008

This resource includes material for people workin with children and for families to explore the story of Easter and the themes of Lent in a variety of ways. Included in this resource are stories of how South West Brunswick UC created a wilderness experience out of a lot of sand and how Templestowe Uniting Church created and used a Labyrinth in their Easter reflections and experiences. The resource includes instructions of how to create and use “tactile storytelling pictures” in Easter reflections as well as some ideas in connecting with the community with a number of activities.

Where do we begin? This is my question as I think about working with children during Lent and Easter. While we are an Easter people with years of tradition surrounding that momentous day around 2000 years ago when the women emerged from the tomb having found it empty, it is still a season that is difficult to talk about with children.

Advent provides a joyful journey towards hope in the birth of Christ, it is comparatively a delightful time to work with children. Lent on the other hand, is a slow and hard journey towards the cross that is difficult to talk to children about. While it is always a good idea to be real with children, it doesn’t make it any easier to tell this story and answer the questions Christs death raises.

It might help us to remember that we do not need to have all the answers. It is okay to let children wonder about the story without providing a solution. It may be that our role is to create a space where children can enter into the
stories, a space where they can begin to form questions and to wonder about the place of these stories in their lives.

Link: Experience Lent and Easter with Children