E is for Emotions

I am posting this late, as you can tell from all of the Easter Eggs. 

We did this lesson plan Easter week.  

The bible focus was Jesus conquering the grave. 

E is for Emotions

Bible

What better to focus on for Easter then Jesus?  The story of Jesus being crucified and rising again is amazing!  I always get excited talking about Jesus, especially what he did for me. 

Bible verse : "He is not here, He has risen!" -Luke 24:6

There are many steps leading up to the crucifixion that are important to go over.  Through the course of the week we focused on the emotions of those involved in the different stories. 

Day 1: We read about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and being betrayed by Judas.  We discussed how Jesus may have felt, how Judas may have felt, and how the other disciples may have felt.   

Day 2: We read about Jesus's trial and carrying the cross.  We discussed how Jesus may have felt and how the pharisees may have felt.  

Day 3: We read about Jesus dying on the cross.  We discussed how Jesus may have felt, the disciples, his mother Mary, and how we feel about it.  We also looked at some renaissance art of Mary holding Jesus when he came off of the cross.  I did this to invoke some emotion.  It is easy to take the crucifixion lightly, I wanted The Dragons to really think about what Jesus went through for us. 

Black 

The Dragons went on a scavenger hunt for black items. 

Alphabet

I started by writing Easter on the board because the holiday was soon approaching.  We took some time talking about the holiday and what it means before I pointed out that it starts with E.  Then we brainstormed some more e words.  Doll Dragon wrote some of the words on the white board then Little Dragon circled all the e's.

Our motion was making an excited face and saying 'e-e-excited!'

Games

When you are teaching with eggs, especially plastic eggs, you have to hide them. Kids know this is a main use for plastic eggs and it's kinda expected.  For E week we did a couple different egg hunts.  And repeated each one a couple times just for fun :).

Number eggs

Glow in the dark eggs

Put a glow stick inside the plastic egg and turn out the lights.  

The number egg hunt was easy to set up.  I used scrap paper and wrote the numbers 1-10 down for each Dragon.  I sorted the eggs into two groups, blue/green, and pink/yellow.  This way I didn't have 1 child getting a double number or finding all of the eggs.  Doll Dragon was to find the pink and yellow eggs.  Little Dragon was to find the blue and green eggs.

The Dragons did not know what was inside the eggs when they went hunting for them.  Once they found all of their eggs they were excited to find numbers inside.  Why excited?  I don't know.  I thought it was odd but I wasn't going to burst their bubble. 

After all 10 eggs were found I gave each dragon a handful of office dots and 10 pieces of paper that had 10 squares on it.   They opened their eggs one at a time and stuck the same amount of stickers on the paper as the number in the egg.   

Matching erasers

I picked up 2 6 packs of erasers at the dollar store that were Easter themed and hid them inside 12 eggs.  I put the 12 eggs in the sensory bin with all the other eggs. 

The Dragons took turns picking out eggs.  

They would shake them to check if something was inside

If something was inside they opened up the egg to discover what eraser was in it.  

If there wasn't something inside we set the egg aside.  

If the erasers did not match or there was only one eraser the eggs went back in the bin. 

If there was a match the eggs stayed out of the bin and the match was kept by the person who found it.  

Crafts
Emotion Eggs
Materials: 

• plastic eggs
• sharpie

Everyone picked an egg then thought of an emotion to draw on it.  There are only so many emotions a child can draw so me and Jerry joined in too.  We would draw an emotion and ask the kids "how does this egg feel?"  

We also drew some Hello Kitty eggs and superheros just for fun. :)

We continued drawing on the eggs until The Dragons were no longer interested.  Good thing I had a lot of eggs! 

Bunny Pancakes
Materials: 

• pancake batter
• pan
• whipped cream 
• blue berries

A picture of this pancake bunny was sent to me on Pintrest from my aunt.  It was fairly simple to make.  I don't have any special tools to make the shapes, as you can see they are not perfect.  I just eyeballed it and made a couple pieces at a time. 

The Dragons didn't know what I was making and were full of giggles when I set down their plates.  

Neither of them wanted to eat the bunny though.  Doll Dragon said it was too cute.  Little Dragon said the bunny couldn't hop if he ate its feet. 

My next post will continue on with emotions and focus more on Jesus conquering the grave.  Such a great think to get excited about!