Why our Holy Week Materials will stay on our shelves for the rest of April
Holy week is a wonderful time to slow down and revisit Christ’s journey the week before His death and resurrection. It’s a time to let the magnitude of His sacrifice and the weight of the burden He carried truly sink in–as much as we can with our human limitations.
We often focus on Holy Week with children for just a week at home. I’m going to encourage you to continue the focus of Holy Week for longer than a week. Especially if your children are either under the age of 6 and/or they are unfamiliar with the narrative of Holy Week. Perhaps you personally need a refresher before you teach your children. You will benefit from this repetition as well! Won’t they get bored with the repetition? I absolutely do not think so. Especially if you are intentionally bringing about different opportunities to play and learn. The bulk of this post will be sharing the strategy we are taking in our home to teach our children God’s word. Right now we have an almost 3 year old and a 3 month old. I will share some ideas for engaging in an extended Bible Study with older children at the end of this post.
Why is Holy Week important? It serves as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice. It is a time to really explore why Jesus had to die, the prophecies He fulfilled, and reflect on our daily walk with Him. A few questions to consider before moving forward. Are we giving space for this in our own lives? Can our children see this? Are we helping our children create space for it?
What is our strategy in our home to do this with our young children? Repetition, story telling, read aloud, and hands on play. Right now we are focusing on the same Bible story for 3-4 weeks. Not that we don’t read any other stories, but that this is our main focus. We read it, story tell it, set up active play opportunities, and work on story sequencing. We’ve also been blessed by The Animated Bible Series on YouTube. We are thinking about adding them to our home DVD library!
Our favorite two Bibles to use with littles are the “Jesus Storybook Bible” and “The Beginner’s Bible”. Our almost three year old has recently been selecting the latter from our shelves but we do read from both regularly. I found “The First Easter Ever” last year and added it to our tot’s Easter basket this year. It was a hit. In addition to this, we have two books on the shelf that are popular with our tot AND are excellent for presenting the gospel: one is “The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross” and the other is “The Tale of Three Trees”. Great stories. Great conversation starters. All of these books will have a place in our book rotation for YEARS to come. I highly recommend adding them to your home library.
I also read directly from the Bible. I love this download I found from Green Urban Creative on Etsy. It takes you through Holy Week visually. We focused on the story cards last week (with Scripture that we read together) and will continue this week. I will also add in the pictures without text to introduce story sequencing for Holy Week towards the end of this week. I will leave this out on her shelves for 1-2 more weeks after they are introduced (as long as she is still showing an interest in them).
While I read to Addison as much as I can throughout the day (my goal is to rarely say no when she asks me to read a book), I intentionally start the day with her Bible Story that we are focusing on. We then will weave it into our circle time each day (this is the start to her first work period following our morning routine). During this time I pray over the girls, story tell or read from the Bible, which I sometimes do while demonstrating the story with a hands on element. Right now we have 12 rainbow peg dolls that we are using to represent the disciples and a larger clothes pin that is standing place as Jesus. There is a gorgeous set of religious play peg people that I’ve been eyeballing on Etsy but I have not purchased yet… Anyhow, the point is you just need to use your imagination! You can make things out of what you already have for hands on play very easily. You can also use felt. This site has done great ideas for making the Bible hands on. It is a great example. This hands on play will remain out until she looses interest or we start another Bible Story focus on our shelves.
Many of these strategies I have already mentioned can easily be used with elementary aged children (and I have used some of them at church successfully when I teach!). Middle school and older youth will likely gravitate towards less play and more content. This is a fantastic opportunity to start studying the Bible in depth together. Slow down your reading and work through it both independently and together with your tween or teen. We can and should study the Bible together. Be comfortable with saying, “I don’t know. Let’s find the answer together in our Bibles” when something hard or new comes up in conversation. Rely on the leadership of your pastor and Bible teachers before Google in discovering the answer. I guarantee that your pastor would LOVE to get a phone call from you both to discuss it. An excellent resource to prepare to teach your teen to study the Bible is this article by Jen Wilkin on the Gospel Coalition. It is a must read for parents.
Many of us are home during this time and can use the time to grow in our faith collectively as a family. I challenge you as parents to dive deeper into this topic and the implications of Holy Week for our lives and the lives of those around us. Especially our own children.
What are your favorite books and resources for Holy Week?