Happy Easter Season!

I am on a mission to give Easter the same level as attention that we give to Christmas. I love the Light The World campaign we do each year in preparation for Christmas, I especially loved the focus on the different characters this year so I did something similar with characters from the Easter story. You can find the printables to download below. I selected 9 characters as well as excerpts from scripture to go with each character. One of the downloads is filled in with the activities my family will be doing, the other is blank so you can fill in your own.

Here’s a list of the activities and some explanations as well as some extra ideas to help if you are putting together your own

Mary Magdalene

• Resurrection Rolls- recipe here I like to relate each part of the recipe to part of the Easter story. The marshmallow reminds us of Jesus, white represents purity. Mary Magdalene and other women prepared Jesus’ body for burial with oil (the melted butter) and spices (the cinnamon and sugar mixture) then wrapped his body in burial cloths (the croissant). Jesus was placed in the tomb (the oven). On Sunday morning Mary returned to the tomb and found a surprise- the tomb was empty (the marshmallow will leave a hollow space in the roll to remind us of the empty tomb.)
• Easter Garden- plant a little garden in a pot, get a mini pot to represent the tomb and place a rock in front of it
• Empty tomb Egg Hunt- like a normal Easter Egg hunt, but one egg is empty
• Share your testimony

Mary, Jesus’ mother

• Easter Journal I made a similar Christmas journal to go along with Mary who “kept these things in her heart and pondered on them.” We’ll do one entry a week each Sunday leading up to Easter. I left plenty of room to write extra if your kid likes to write, or room to draw a picture. This format has worked well for my kiddos ranging in age from 3-9.
• Adopt a grandparent
• Date with mom

Mary, Martha’s sister

• Easter lilies craft- Idea from the Friend magazine
• Sing Easter songs
• Do a good deed
• Pedicures with essential oils

Peter the Apostle

• Wash Feet
• Palm frond crosses- this is a simple little tradition that comes out of Palm Sunday, just a little thing to do with your hands while at Palm Sunday services. Sometimes we make it to a service that uses Palms, but we also have a neighbor with a Palm tree that we can also get palm fronds from. Here’s a quick tutorial.
• Create an Easter timeline- I’ll have my older kids write out their own timeline, but I love the sequencing activity from Teaching Mama for little ones (lots of other great Easter printables there as well!)

The Apostles

• Celebrate Passover- we’re going to follow this guide
• Take the sacrament
• Review goals for the year
• Pray, even when you’re tired

Simon the Cyrenian

• Study the geography around Israel
• Carry something really heavy
• Bear a burden with a service project- We’re going to go to Feed My Starving Children

Joseph of Arimathea

• Visit the grave of a loved one
• Pick a personal item to donate
• Easter movie night- We love the Veggie Tales Easter movies and To This End Was I Born
• Do some transcribing or take pictures for Billion Graves

Nephites

• Watch the Testaments
• Watch Come See the Light
• Star Gazing
• Visit the Temple

Jesus

• Jesus’ light cake- use trick candles on a cake, as you blow out the candles explain that they tried to blow out Jesus’ light by crucifying him, but his light came back, then as you keep blowing them out remind the kids that sometimes His light may feel far away or hard to see in our lives, but it always comes back just like the trick candles re-light again and again.
• Pray for someone
• Date with dad
• Go to a petting zoo to see a donkey and sheep to remember the donkey that Jesus rode on into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and to consider the lambs sacrificed at Passover and Jesus as the Lamb of God
• Go to the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple

I recommend printing the list through Staples or another online print service as a Blue Print size 18×24. The first one is filled in with activities (the first 3 from each character), the second is blank for you to fill in yourself.

Thank you for checking out this post! I am passionate about making resources like this super accessible to families. At the same time, they do take a significant amount of time to put together. If you feel able to donate a dollar or two to keep more resources like this coming it would be greatly appreciated. You could Venmo me @Stephanie-Abbott-22

All images created using Copilot AI