Catholics do a great job at Lent. We fast, pray, and give like champs. For forty days we fill devotionals, give up things we love, and pick ways to help others. I love picking lenten devotions and planning my lenten promises. My classroom and home are taken over by the color purple and the symbols of the season. And then when Easter comes around: poof! Down come the stations of the cross, the purple cloths, the signs of sacrifice. It’s hard to find the same sort of support and planning to celebrate Easter in our homes and classrooms, even though it’s a much bigger deal!
For the last several years I’ve been on a mission to celebrate Easter even bigger and better than I celebrate Lent. I’ve found some of the best music of the season to play throughout the 50 days. I’ve taught my students about the Via Lucis, the Stations of Light, and prepped stations to display in our school hallways. I’ve studied the Acts of the Apostles with my 7th graders and planned activities for Divine Mercy Sunday. My goal is to eventually have at least 50 great ideas for how to celebrate this season, and I’m really excited for today’s idea: Easter Egg Psalms.
My amazing mother-in-law is the 3rd grade religion at my school, and she had this brilliant idea for celebrating the Easter season with her students. She has the third graders go through the Psalms and pick a few verses that sing the praise of God. They then copy these verses and put them in plastic Easter eggs, one for each day of the Easter season. The eggs are placed in a basket on the class prayer table and the students open one each morning and use the verse for morning prayer.
I love the idea of having students find and write the verses, but the reality of school this year is that asking a student to find 50 verses to share with their family might be a bit much to ask. Also, for home use it might be nice to have a set of 50 bible verses all ready to cut out and stuff into some plastic eggs. So at the end of the post you will find 50 verses for each of the 50 days of Easter. They are ready to use and share- even though we are a week into the season, we still have six more weeks to celebrate! It’s never too late to start a new prayer tradition with your family or class.
Happy Easter!
