Easter Excitements

First off, we wish all of you a wonderful Easter! Our Easter Sunday was a bit more dramatic than we had anticipated. Elise gave her first talk in Primary, on the topic of 'Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer'. We used the sunbeam manual Easter lesson for most of the ideas. She practiced a lot, and did a great job! Then the drama began. The sister who taught sharing time decided to show the entire video of 'The Lamb of God', which was an interesting choice....and was VERY concerning for our little sunbeams (3 and 4 years old). Elise sat on my lap, put her hands over her ears, turned away from the screen, and closed her eyes. She knew the basics of the video, since she'd spoken about them in her talk, but the intense-ness of the film was too much for her and the rest of our class. One little girl gasped and put her hands over her mouth in concern and anxiety....needless to say, we could have had a less intense video or explanation, and not just hope that the intense stuff would go over the heads of the young ones.... When we got to class time and the kids were coloring a picture of Jesus and the tomb, one little boy used his red crayon to color 'blood' inside the tomb and wounds on Jesus.... And as I explained what resurrection means, and tried to help them understand that it is a good thing, my girl began to cry and express that she wanted to remain just her, which I assured her she would. After that explanation, we took a lovely walk outside to enjoy the spring sunshine and birds singing, and then played with bubbles.....All in all, I am very grateful that Logan and I are the teachers for Elise's class, so we know and get to control (to an extent) what she is learning about and can shelter her a bit. And I decided that some more trivial, light hearted celebrations were going to be ok to take my girl's mind off things. This morning we made Easter bonnets from paper plates, paper bowls, construction paper flowers, and tissue paper. She had a blast! We had Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in Easter Parade playing in the background while we worked. Elise had a great time finishing her spring bonnet, dancing with Fred, and then doing a marching band parade down the hallway.

And we made a special spring time flower snack:
(Both those activities were ones I found in online blogs.)

I think for the next several family home evening topics we are going to stick more to events that took place during the Savior's life from the New Testament, and learn those great 'Stories of Jesus'. My girl is also learning the song "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" for the Primary Program, so we'll keep practicing that.
In the meantime, we wish you all a wonderful and Happy Easter, and hope your day was filled with love and fun! Here is her Easter/Spring dress I made for her:

And here is her talk (it was a practice run):