Our 2012 Easter Garden

Last Saturday afternoon we made our Easter garden.  An Easter garden is a great visual way for me to teach Hannah and Ethan about Easter.  Our garden includes 3 crosses (Jesus' death on the cross), a tomb (teaching about resurrection of Jesus), candles (Jesus is the light of the world), and of course the garden part (Jesus prays in the garden, and in Christ we have new life) .  Between now and Easter my hope is to use the garden to talk about the events of Holy week (When You Rise has a great chronology of  Holy Week).  This is our second year making an Easter garden, last year we didn't actually plant anything but this year we did. 

Both Hannah and Ethan had fun helping Andrew and I put the dirt in and leveling it out.  Then we put in the tomb, candles, and rocks.  Once it was laid out I added the seeds and covered with a little more soil. Finally, we put in the crosses and some more rocks.

Hannah and Ethan liked decorating and re-decorating with the rocks.

I love how Hannah hugs Ethan when I ask her to take a picture with Ethan.

We made the tomb when we made our Lenten Spiral.  Hannah and I made the tomb out of salt dough with black paint added to the dough to  give it the grey rock color.

We planted three different seeds but only the sprouts have come up so far.   This picture was taken 3.5 days later I couldn't believe how fast the sprouts came up.

Our Lenten spiral on the left, our Easter garden, and finally Hannah's Lenten Spiral on the right.

Here is our Easter garden from last year.  Hannah looks so tiny.