Countdown to Easter

This year I decided that our Easter was sadly not Christ-centered enough.  We just haven't established any really good family traditions (beyond the Easter Bunny) yet.

After thinking about what we do to countdown to Christmas and seeing my friend post about what her family does, I came up with my plan.

This will be our new Countdown to Easter board.  There is a small lesson for everyday for 31 days contained inside an Easter egg.  Every night before family prayer we'll get the next egg, read the lesson, and attach an item to the board so we have a visual reminder of what we've learned.

The 31 days are divided into 3 sections.  1. Who is Jesus?  2. Symbols.  3. Holy Week.

The top row, Who is Jesus?, comes from this activity from the Friend Magazine.  For each day there is a statement about Christ, a scripture to read, and then either a discussion question or a song to sing. Then the accompanying picture gets velcroed to our board. (If you do this, be sure and click "download pdf" on the right side of the webpage.  That way you can print out the 2 page version instead of the small 1 page version.)

The next two rows are pockets made of clear contact paper to house all the 16 Symbols.  It's pretty ugly-looking on the board so I may have to brainstorm a better way to do this later.
The symbols section is where we'll learn all about the details of the Atonement/Ressurection and the events leading up to it.  The eggs contain a small object (like a rock for the stone that covered the tomb and a nail for the crucifixion) and then a scripture and brief description of the significance.

The final 8 days before Easter are Holy Week.  We'll read scriptures and look at pictures from the Gospel Art Kit to learn about the key events of each day leading up to the first Easter.  And that yellow summary gets velcroed to our board.

(I can't find the Gospel Art Kit online. Does the Church not make it anymore?  I think you can probably find all of the needed pictures in the Gospel Art Book or online here.)

I mod-podged the little labels to each egg and they conveniently fit in these two cute sparkly Easter egg boxes I have.

I'm very excited to implement this next year!  In fact, I don't think I want to wait until next year.  We just may do it now.  I just need to gather a couple more symbols (a tiny cocktail sword and soap) and then I'll be totally good to go!

(I would love to share the results of my hard work with everyone!  Unfortunately, I don't know how to insert a free downloadable/printable version straight on the blog.  But if you give me your email address, I'll send you the documents I created.  The vast majority of the information came from the resources my friend shared in her posts that I linked above.)