Christmas and Easter are my most favorite times to impress my kid with God’s love and life. At Christmas we spend all month doing advent calendars and more to focus on Jesus. Easter isn’t quite the cultural phenomenon that Easter is, but I still want it to be special, exciting and “magical” for my kids!

Here are some of my favorite ways to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Not all of them require lots of supplies or big amounts of time. Today is Good Friday, so it’s the perfect time to do one of these activities with your kids!

1. Resurrection Garden

I’ve seen several Easter Gardens on Pinterest and in magazines. But I like the twist we’ve put on ours. We make a little garden in a pie pan on Good Friday (pulling weeds, twigs and moss from our backyard), then we just watch it wilt on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday morning before the kids get up, I cover the garden with fresh colorful flowers! It’s an exciting, surprising reminder of Jesus’ new life!

2. Resurrection Books

There are so many fabulous books that show the death and resurrection of Jesus in kid-friendly ways. One of my favorites isn’t even about the actual crucifixion, but a parable of Jesus’ life, death and new life. The Parable of the Lily shows a bulb transformed into life after being buried all winter! It would be fun to buy a lily to display in your house to remind you of this miracle!

3. Easter Baskets

We do Easter baskets a little bit differently. First I let my kids fill up their baskets with rocks. We look at the rocks and discuss how sin makes our hearts hard. We cover up our baskets with a big red cloth and then later on (when the kids least expect it!), the see a third basket labeled ‘”Jesus” with all their rocks inside! And in their baskets? No more rocks–it’s full of gifts that help them grow in God’s Word!

Use this season to let your kids feel and see the real excitement of the resurrection! He is risen!
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Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!

Remember that old saying about March coming in like a lion and out like a lamb? I have distinct memories of making lion and lamb crafts from construction paper in school during March. I thought it would be fun to make a lion and lamb craft with my son this month.

But instead of just focusing on March’s weather, we also added some scriptures to remind us of Jesus this March…

“See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.” Revelation 5:5

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! “ John 1:29

All you need is two old tops (mine were from oatmeal), lots and lots of buttons, glue, black craft foam and a black pipe cleaner.

Start by gluing buttons around the edges of your tops. Then just squeeze in as many buttons as possible–you want to try to cover up any white space!

For our lion, we added some wiggly eyes on the bottom (to show off his mane to it’s full size!), a triangle craft foam nose and some curvy pipe cleaners for a mouth. He’s a little goofier than I hoped, but I still like him!

Our lamb’s face is on a large black button. Two wiggly eyes and a small red button for a tongue finish him off!

Cute, huh? And now as we experience the seasons of March–the blustery winds and the tender new spring, we can think of how our Lord and Savior, Jesus is as strong as a lion yet chose to sacrifice Himself as the Lamb of God for us, His beloved children.

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Easter is coming! Check out these Easter books from Tommy Nelson, all 20% off and great for building a perfect Easter Basket!

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Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!

This year for Valentine’s Day, we decided to do a semi-diy project for my daughter’s class. I randomly found a pack of mini-bubbles in our upstairs craft closet. Who knows what they are left over from!

To go along with our little bubbles, we made some fun bubble paint cards! These are super easy and waaaay fun!

All you need is some cardstock, cups, straws, liquid soap, acrylic paint and water!

Pour about a tablespoon of water into each glass.

Then add a squirt of paint.

Then a big squirt of soap.

Mix it all together and start blowing! Yes, like the thing you’ve been telling your kids not to do because it’s rude? Let ‘em do it!

Once the bubbles start coming out of the glass, smash the cardstock down on top of them! They’ll pop and make pretty designs on the paper!

We actually found they made darker prints when we just kept the paper on top of the cup and blew bubbles onto it.

You might have to experiment with your measurements in the cups–we added more paint when we wanted darker colors and more soap when we felt like we needed it. It’s not an exact science! Or you can be like my daughter and blow into four cups at one time!

After it was all dry (and the mess wiped up), we cut the cardstock into little squares and wrote notes on them. I racked my brain to think of a Scripture that talked about bubbles. But I guess those hadn’t been invented yet!

Instead we went with, “POP-ing into say God Loves You!” and “God’s Love BUBBLES up for you!”. We’re going to tape them to the bubbles and deliver them on Valentine’s Day! Cute, huh?

Can you think of any other good bubble puns for me?

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Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!

I love the New Year because it is so fresh and clean! It seems like a giant piece of white paper stretching as far as the eye can see, just waiting for me to write my year on it! Every year, whether I make official resolutions or not, I feel like I have a theme, or a word or a thing that I just want to do for that year.

This year, for New Year’s I want to do something special as a family. Some friends of ours told us once about a family retreat they went on where they planned a family cheer. It was the cutest thing ever to see their 1st grader and preschooler chant their cheer together. My friend, Jill and her husband “give” their kids a scripture each year and then pray it over them all year long. I’ve read other parenting books that suggest family mottos and mission statements.

It kinda reminds me of the family rules canvas my friend Leigh made:

And this fun family motto from Make and Takes:

I just love the idea of having these words, phrases and goals around the house for all to see and on the tips of the family’s tongue. These small things can not only bind your family together, but keep important ideas in the forefront of your kids’ hearts and minds.

So, for our New Year celebration, we will be talking about, praying about and creating a family motto, a phrase or a scripture that we will adopt for this year. It will be something we can remind each other of when we’re tired, whiny and angry. Something we can ask God to help us show each other. Something that our family will be able to see come to pass in our home this year. I’m excited to see where God leads our family this year!

How can your family experience this new year together?

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Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!

source: babi

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And not just for yummy food, gifts and parties. Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for parents to teach their children about Jesus! Kids have been looking forward to Christmas all year. Stores, media and school talk about it every day. It’s the easiest time to focus on Jesus!

I’m not opposed to singing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer or making stocking-shaped cookies at home. But I am opposed to making these things the center of our Christmas celebration when the story of Jesus can be just as fun, exciting and “magical”!

Instead of putting daily thought into what an elf on your shelf is doing, why not make daily memories and big God-connections with your kids about Jesus? It’s easy to do–here are some of my favorite ways:

1. Advent Calendar

source: mandi ehman

Advent calendars can be more than the open-the-door-and-get-a-piece-of-candy. There are tons of cute calendars where you can enter your own items. I like to put in a Bible verse or a special Christmas activity (like reading a book or delivering cookies to a neighbor). I love the above printable paper chain as an advent calendar!

2. Christmas Catalogs
I usually trash the toy catalogs that come in the mail during November and December. The only catalogs we look through are the gift catalogs from World Vision, Compassion and Samaritan’s Purse. We let our kids pick out one gift to give from those catalogs. Last year, my daughter picked bunnies to give to a needy family. My son chose a goat so a family could have milk! These are the Christmas lists I want my kids to make!

3. Christmas Books

source: katherine marie photography

I have an addiction to Christmas books. I just can’t pass them up! However, my Christmas books are about 95% about Jesus and NOT about Santa or elves. Not because I think Santa is evil, it’s just that there are so many fantastic books that focus on the true meaning of Christmas! We pull these books out only at Christmas and read them all month long. One of my favorite ideas is to wrap up 24 Christmas books and let the kids unwrap one each day leading up to Christmas. How fun if those 24 books were focused on the love and gift of Jesus!

My philosophy on Christmas (and lots of other things in parenting) is not to restrict my kids, but to overwhelm them with fantastic alternatives! I don’t have to control my kids from “believing in Santa” or give them this weight of “we’re not allowed to watch that” because we have so much fun learning about Jesus, the wisemen, and the shepherds. They don’t feel left out because our holiday is full of daily “magic” about Him!

How can you make the real story of Christmas fun and exciting?

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Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!