The Fifty Days of Easter

Easter is the most important feast in the Christian calendar--even more important than Christmas. Since Easter is such a great feast, the Easter season lasts 50 days, from Easter Sunday until Pentecost Sunday.

This year, I got so wrapped up in our Lenten Activities that I wasn't very good about planning out anything for the 50 days of Easter... Our Easter week was wonderful, as was Divine Mercy Sunday, but this past week it seemed that our celebration of the season was fizzling out.

After seeing the wonderful plans that Dawn & Matilda had for celebrating the Easter season this year I ordered The Garden of the Good Shepherd: A Sticker Calendar to Count the Fifty Days of Easter, a great little booklet booklet by Peter Mazar, with illustrations by Tomie dePaola, (for an incredible price--in fact, I ordered a few...) with the plans of using it next year.

Well, it arrived on Saturday, and so yesterday I thought, "Why wait... Let's just do it!" There's nothing wrong with starting late, right? If I put everything off till the perfect time, I'd never actually do ANYTHING!

So, yesterday afternoon I took a few minutes (literally) to get it ready. I started out thinking that I would hang the eggs, but then I decided that could wait till next year, and shifted gears to numbering the eggs 1-49 (day 50 is actually Pentecost Sunday) and placing them in a basket. One for each day, since the Easter season lasts seven weeks -- a week of weeks-- of course, since 7 is the perfect number! :-) My thought was that this could also double as math practice for my little ones, by finding the correct number each day.

After dinner, the children gathered around our learning table and we did a bit of catch up! Yesterday was day 15 of the Easter season. It was quite fun, and got us off to a great start. The symbol for yesterday was "the sun" so we finished up by making a modified paper plate sun craft and hung it on the window of our school room.

My plans are to refer to Matilda's ideas for each day, modify them for our family, and then fill the correct eggs. So far she has posted ideas for Week 1 and 2 and Week 3.

Week 3 is all about how "The Heavens Tell God's Glory!"

I surprised the boys with a Weather Kid Kit that has been in my closet forever, so we will be doing a few extra weather experiments this week, in addition to the following:

• The Sun : make a paper plate sun craft
• The Cloud : Cloud experiments found (by Matilda!) here
• The Rain : Make a Rain Gauge and read Down Comes the Rain and Rain Drop Splash
• The Lightning : Read Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll and then begin working on our Ben Franklin lap books
• The Wind : Learn how to measure wind speed, Blow Bubbles and/or make a Paper Bag Kite
• The Rainbow : watch Signing Time # 6 and sign/sing Colors of the Rainbow
• The Hail : Play "Here comes the Rain Hail"
  

Here Comes the Rain/Hail Game

from Little Saints Pre-School Program

Prep: Take 2 aluminum pie pans and place 1/4 of beans in one of them. Staple the other pan on top. You will also need couch cushion and/or child's special blanket.

1. Discuss how animals seek shelter when it rains. Have child choose to make believe they are an eagle, dove or butterfly. Instruct them that they will have to listen carefully in this game so they can hear the storm coming and seek shelter before they get wet.
2. Have them place the cushion (nest) or their blanket (tree) where their nest/tree will be.
3. Have child pretend to fly around; butterflies seeking nectar, doves and eagles seeking food.
4. Hidden from view, gently start to shake the pie pan, building up to storm level.
5. Once the children have landed in their nest or under their tree safely, slowly stop the "rain/ hail" and repeat.

Well, that's the plan... Now I feel like we are still celebrating Easter at home!!!