10 Easter traditions kids love

Easter traditions can be broken into two distinct categories – traditional, celebrating the origins and the meaning of Easter and contemporary, celebrating the chocolate and the bunnies!

We’ve listed five of each to help you honour the history of the event as well as enjoy a modern twist to Easter that kids love getting involved in.

Here are 10 Easter traditions kids love and you’ll enjoy creating with your family at home!

Traditional Easter celebrations

Don’t wait until the eggs start to appear in the shops to talk about the meaning of Easter. Be proactive. Make the conversation with your child a fluid and evolving one.

Here are five traditional Easter celebrations that will help kids understand the meaning of Easter.

1) Create an Easter story wreath.

When your children are very small, the story of Easter needs to be simple but also accurate. Most kids love drawing and colouring-in, so this Easter story wreath should hit the mark.

2) Stained glass Easter cross craft.

This is a great craft activity to use as a starting point to talk with children about the cross and its meaning at Easter. These ‘stained glass’ crosses are great to display in windows and watch the sun shine through. All you need is tracing paper, coloured tissue paper or cellophane and black poster paper. The crosses are perfect for Lent and the bright colours are perfect for decorating kids’ bedrooms! Find the instructions here.

Image: Kinder Craze

3) Read Easter stories for kids.

With so much attention given to the Easter bunny and chocolate on television and in stores, children can easily forget that traditionally Easter is about Jesus. There are a number of great books that help kids understand more about Easter. Try: What is Easter?, The Beginners Bible to the Very First Easter, The Story of Easter and From the Bunny to the Cross.

This charming book will help parents remind their children about the reason we celebrate Easter. Children will love the colourful pictures and parents will be able to help their kids appreciate the meaning of Easter, not just for the Easter bunnies and chocolate, but also the historical significance.

4) Watch age-appropriate videos.

Finding the right words to explain the meaning of Easter a challenge? Did you know that there are age appropriate Easter stories that families can watch on Youtube that can help you explain the meaning of Easter to your kids? A quick google will bring up a range of choices, but we particularly like this one.

5) Church services.

As a family it is up to you to decide when your kids are old enough to participate in various services run by churches. At Easter time churches hold multiple services to commemorate Easter: Stations of the Cross, Good Friday, Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday services.

Some of these services are solemn commemorations of the death of Christ and those attending need to pay respect to the importance of the messages.

Contemporary Easter celebrations

More and more these days, Easter is about chocolate, bunnies, chicks and Easter egg hunts! So, we confess, we are fans of these things too and the joy that Easter brings our children.

6) Easter egg hunts.

Whether you’re planning an ‘at home Easter egg hunt’ or joining a prearranged one in a suburb near you, there is no denying that kids love Easter egg hunts. As the kids get older, why not plant ‘clues’ around the house and yard to help them seek and find rather than just ‘stumble upon’ their eggs.

If you’re joining a suburban Easter egg hunt, these are often whole day events with face painting, petting zoos and kids’ activities. Remember to be conscious of the number of kids there. Teach teens to be careful around little ones and be respectful with the number of eggs they manage to hunt down. These suburban hunts are tonnes of fun when everyone plays fair.

7) Easter Sunday gift traditions.

In some homes, Easter Sunday morning has become a tradition to rival Christmas morning! On Saturday night, many families delight in decorating the house with Easter decorations and dropping chewed up carrots around the house or leaving white ‘bunny prints’ that lead to the delivery of the Easter egg stash for the kids.

The present haul for the kids ranges from books to chocolate bunnies and eggs to clothing. I wonder if that bunny needs my address?

8) Cooking Easter treats with kids.

There are so many Easter-themed treats that you can make with your kids in the lead up to and over the Easter break. The one pictured is called ‘Bunny Down a Hole’ and they are mini carrot cakes – how perfect! You can also try your hand at making your own Easter Eggs using rubber moulds and melted chocolate or even marsh mellow bunnies where you use desiccated coconut dyed green for grass. So. Much. Fun!

9) Easter hats.

Yup, whether you have kids in childcare or primary school, you will understand the pain (err… I mean fun!) of the Easter hat making scenario. Get out your craft box, fold up some cardboard and create the best Easter bonnet you know how. Feather, glitter, stickers, glues, fluffy chicks, more glue and some tulle and you are the proud owners of an Easter hat…for your kids…of course!

10) Decorating Easter eggs.

Decorating Easter eggs has been a tradition for many families for years. However, the tradition of painting hard-boiled eggs pre-dates Christianity. In many cultures around the world, the egg is a symbol of new life, fertility and rebirth.

Today families gather their hard-boiled eggs and place them in food colouring to dye them various colours…experienced egg decorators may try to outdo each other with variations including tie-dyed, checked, glittered and hand painted animals and more!

What about you? What are your Easter traditions? We’d love to hear from you!

For more things to do at home these school holidays check out these awesome backyard play ideas to keep the kids occupied and how to create a kid-approved play area for redecorating fun.