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Faith Formation: Holy Week & Easter

Resources including: Children & Family Curricula & Storytime; Confirmation/Affirmation of Baptism; Denominational Resources; Tween & Teen Mental and Spiritual Health; Sexuality & Identity; and Online/At-Home Tech

Palm Sunday / Holy Week

Storytelling with Shapes: Holy WeekStorytelling with Shapes resources offer a unique and engaging way to engage in the Holy Week and Easter stories through creative storytelling and tangram puzzles. These engaging tools are perfect for a wide audience, including children, youth, and adults, making them ideal for intergenerational events.

Holy Week Coloring PagesAn Illustrated Holy Week: Including children’s moment illustrations, children’s activity bulletins for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, coloring pages, and interactive worship guides for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday (which would take some adapting to virtual church, but would give you some great material to get you started); and Holy Week Coloring Pages.

Download Illustrated Ministry's Palm Frond Coloring Page here.

Maundy Thursday

A Place for You Starter Pack

A Place for You Starter Pack introduces new communicants to Holy Communion with Dan Erlander's A Place for You Interactive Edition: My Holy Communion Book.

Find additional resources for preparing for First Communion here.

Good Friday

Finding The Way of The Cross (or The Stations of the Cross) in Nature

These guides provide children and adults a way to discover that the story of Good Friday and the cross is written into the natural world about them if they only know where to look!

Were You There? Stations of the Cross - Orbis BooksWere You There? Stations of the Cross

By: Diana L. Hayes

What can we learn from the son of the carpenter, the Son of God, about our lives and the path we should follow? To contemplate this powerful re-enactment of Jesus's Passion--where Jerusalem is an African village, and all the characters are African--we reflect upon our own lives and burdens: family divisions, community clashes, poverty and racism, sins of commission and omission.

Rev. Emily Meyer offers a neighborhood, intergenerational Good Friday Stations of the Cross with preparatory activities throughout Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday and a Leader Guide for you. She also shares creative ideas for sermons and liturgical elements for Palm Sunday, The Easter Vigil and Easter Morning.

SHC_March_blogIncluding Children in Holy Week

As we look ahead to Holy Week, this blog post from Jessica Davis explores ways to include children in these important services.

Easter

Storytelling with Shapes: EasterStorytelling with Shapes: Easter guides you through a creative, engaging, and tactile way of experiencing the Easter story. Because of the varying degrees of difficulties in the puzzles, Storytelling with Shapes: Easter can be used by many age groups, children, youth (6th–12th grade), and even during intergenerational events.

Interactive Prayer Stations on Easter & Transformation

These prayer stations focus on Easter and Transformation using the metamorphosis of a caterpillar/butterfly as a metaphor for one’s faith journey.

Traci Smith offers a “redo” of the traditional Jelly Bean Prayer. The traditional one focuses on the darkness of one’s heart and the red blood of Jesus. This redo is more of a general reflection on new life and Spring and can be used during the season after Easter as well as for Lent and Easter. I hope you enjoy it! This prayer is found in Faithful Families for Lent, Easter, and Resurrection by Traci Smith. Chalice Press; 2022.

Easter Worship Video     Easter Sticker Sheets

Books

Easter on the Farm     Lift-the-Flap Easter Stories for Young Children     Jesus is Risen!: An Easter Pop-Up Book     Little Ewe: The Story of One Lost Sheep     Looking for Jesus: A Manna and Mercy Easter Board Book     Make Room     Make Space for Jesus     Snuggle Time Easter Stories     The Story of Easter     

Lists of Resources

Illustrated Ministry's Holy Week Coloring Pages join a large library of coloring pages and posters to use during Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. Check them all out here.

Wild Goose Publications

The Iona Community offers numerous resources, spanning from Lenten devotionals, liturgies for Ash Wednesday, Mother's Day, Earth Day, and Holy Week to Easter; at-home family activities, and more.

In Our Library

Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco     Book - Paperback

Easter Season

50 Days of Spiritual Practice from Easter to Pentecost Up to 500 Copies image 1 Journey from Easter to Pentecost with 50 Days of Spiritual Practice. Each week takes you through a different theme to deepen your faith. Do all the activities or pick and choose as your schedule allows. This is a “perpetual calendar” designed to be used every year. Match up the weeks with your calendar and pencil them in!

Close-up of a green plant with two white flowers drooping down in front of a blurred background How to Live the 50 Days of Easter

Suggests for living into the Easter Season from Building Faith