From the cradle to the cross Easter craft for your Sunday School

Since taking over my church’s Sunday School lessons and having to look for crafts that will work for the non-crafty, a big order.  I wanted a good Gospel-centered craft for Easter Sunday for the kindergarten through second grade to put together.  This Easter craft has to be taught by a cop teaching kindergarteners.  I kid you not, we have a real-life Kindergarten cop situation, only he happily volunteers with the kids and is awesome with them.  While searching Pinterest, I found this Christmas to Easter craft.

But I knew our kindergarten cop Sunday School teacher would not show 20 kindergarteners how to do it.  So I simplified it.  It also had to be easier on finding materials, since we will be doing this craft at two out of our three Easter services, and that means putting together supplies to make a couple hundred of these.

Supplies for this Easter craft

mini craft sticks*, pipe cleaners* (in my house I buy them 1000 at a time, because I have three kids that love to use them for crafts), 2 inch square of construction paper*, plastic Easter eggs* (if you’re buying this for your church this is a good price, otherwise I raid my kids’ Easter egg stash for this, though double check the mini popsicle stick fits in the egg), glue stick* (I verified you can do this with glue sticks because that’s what my church has, but school glue* would work better)

Why this Easter craft?

There’s a joke that some people are C and E Christians, Christmas and Easter. So why not capitalize on that?  The last any of these visitors saw Jesus, He was a baby.  That same baby we just celebrated being born has grown up, taught for three years, and so angered the religious leaders they are willing to lie to get Him killed.

So, let’s bring it back to where it started, and show how it went forward to Easter.

Let’s put together this From Christmas to Easter craft

Since I’m putting together this for kindergarten cop, I’m having to do much better at taking step-by-step pictures of the crafts.  Let’s start with the Christmas part of this Easter craft (yes I am inordinately amused at having Christmas in an Easter craft).

1. Put glue on the back of the mini-popsicle stick.  Then place the mini popsicle stick diagonally on your construction paper.
2. Fold up the bottom corner of the square and glue it down.  If you’re using a glue stick this will take a lot of glue.
3. Fold over one corner of the square.  I’ll admit as I was making this, it really did remind me of how I used to wrap my kids as a baby.
4. Fold over the other side of the square, gluing the construction paper down.
5. Draw your face.

When Jesus was born, God sent His one and only son to earth as an innocent child.  That child was both fully God and fully man.  I do not comprehend how that was done, but it was.  This child grew up and spent three years showing the world what God had intended for them.  However, what He showed the world scared many, especially the religious leaders in power, and so they chose to have Jesus killed.

Now let’s put together the cross, it’s a fairly straightforward bit of bending with the pipe cleaner.

1. Fold the pipe cleaner in half.  Fold the pipe cleaner up on one side about the width of your finger.  Do the same thing on the other side.
2. Fold the pipe cleaner again back on itself leaving about the width of your finger, and repeat this on the other side again.
3. Now fold the pipe cleaner back down again.  To help it maintain the correct shape, I twisted the pipe cleaner upon itself.

During Passover, Jesus was arrested by the religious leaders and tried for blasphemy.  They could not get witnesses to agree on what Jesus said, and they went to Pilate and said, “Have this man executed.”  Pilate could find no guilt in Jesus, but because he was afraid of rebellion, he had Jesus crucified.  Jesus was buried on Friday before sundown.

And the final thing that’s going into the egg, is a flower.  This is to remind us of the life we can now have because Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

Fold 5 or so petals into your flower.  I had a tiny pipe cleaner, so I was just able to do 5 very small petals and have a little bit left over.

This would be a very sad story if it ended with Jesus dead, but He didn’t stay dead.  Instead on the third day, Jesus rose again to new life.  Because of what Jesus did for us, we too can have a new life.  That is why we include the flower in this Easter craft, because of the new life it represents.

Get some more Easter ideas

• Easter in a Box
• Finding Easter in the Passover
• Easter Lesson: Memories of the Resurrection