I've been trying to teach my kids about the Stations of the Cross this lent, and it's going really well! Unfortunately, I can't find my box of Lenten stuff
anywhere! So I was totally missing my
resurrection eggs, and our
Stations of the Cross box. Rather than recreate both of them, I combined them to make this amazing set of Stations of the Cross eggs, and I love them! :-)
Because there are 14 stations, and only 12 eggs in a dozen, I used an egg carton that holds 18 eggs. The first 14 (for the stations) I used purple eggs with the numbers drawn on top with a sharpie. Then I used a yellow egg for the resurrection (because I wanted this to be included, but not to look like a part of the stations of the cross). There were 3 spaces left in the carton, so I added Lenten eggs labeled "pray, fast, give alms". For these eggs I put in a rosary for prayer, a goldfish cracker for fasting, and some coins for almsgiving. I wanted these eggs to be a different color than the stations of the cross eggs, so we went with blue.
I got a package of little wooden hearts at Michael's for under $3, and painted them red. On one side I put our stations of the cross stickers, and on the back of the hearts I wrote in what each station is.
Each one of our stations of the cross eggs has one heart, and one symbol for that station. You can use these as an activity for the children to match up the symbols, or you can just use them to go through the Stations of the Cross one at a time. I plan on taking ours to church when we attend stations of the cross so my kids can follow along.
I also wanted to make these with the kids in my preschool class, and I needed them to fit into a regular dozen eggs. I was able to do that by combining all 3 falls into 1 egg. (We used band-aids to symbolize the falls, so I just labeled the band-aids "1,2,3" and shoved them into one egg and labeled it for all 3 stations where Jesus falls, which are 3, 7, and 9. I had the kids put the stations of the cross stickers on the outside of their eggs (although you could totally do this without the stickers at all).
Making all the pieces for 8 different sets of these was more of an undertaking that I originally anticipated, but it was so worth it!
Symbols we used for Each Station of the Cross
Station 1: Jesus is condemned to death. Piece of string for binding Jesus' hands.
Station 2: Jesus carries his cross. Popsicle sticks cut down with scissors and glued into a cross shape.
Station 3: Jesus falls the first time. A band-aid.
Station 4: Jesus meets his mother. A Miraculous Metal, which has Mary on it. (For my preschool class, we used small wooden hearts with a Mary sticker on them. You could also paint a Mary peg doll, or use a rosary, or even just use a small blue piece of felt to symbolize Mary).
Station 5: Simon helps Jesus carry his cross. A hand-shaped button hand for Simon being a "helping hand". (You could also just cut out a hand shape from paper).
Station 6: Veronica wipes Jesus' face. Scrap of fabric with Jesus' face sketched on it.
Station 7: Jesus falls the second time. Another band-aid.
Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. A tissue to dry their tears.
Station 9: Jesus falls the third time. Another band-aid.
Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments. A small garment cut from felt with a piece of embroidery floss tied around it. (This doesn't have to be all "cutesy" like our garments- it could just be a square piece of felt).
Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross. A nail. (I actually bought a big box of masonry nails at my hardware store because I love how square and old-fashioned they looked. The perfect "Jesus nails"!)
Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross. A small plastic crucifix, usually used to make rosaries.
Station 13:
Jesus is taken down from the cross. A picture of Michelangelo's Pieta. (I just printed pictures from the internet and laminated them with packing tape).
Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb. A rock- for sealing the tomb. (I did have some actual decorative stones from the Dollar Tree, but you could easily use a piece of gravel or something from your yard).
Lydia helped me laminate all our Pietas with some packing tape!
Here's one of our masonry nails.
These garments didn't actually take long to cut from felt at all! Just
double over a long rectangle, cut a head hole, and tie on some string.
I wanted to have the kids color the popsicle stick crosses with a
brown marker, but we didn't have time.
Salvage a broken rosary if you don't have any crucifixes on hand.
These actually took longer to put together with my preschool class than I though it would, so I ended up letting them eat animal crackers while we worked. (All the kids in my class are only 2).
I let them put their own Mary stickers on the heart for the 4th station.
For the set at preschool, there were 2 stickers leftover at the end (the extra "falls") so we used them to decorate the outside of their egg cartons. For our set at home, we painted the egg carton purple, and decoupaged a Stations of the cross label on. This actually turned out nicer than I was expecting. The mod podge made the egg carton seem almost like plastic. If you're going to paint your carton, I would suggest using a cardboard carton (not Styrofoam) and using tempera paint. It was pretty time consuming to paint the egg carton, which is why I only painted the top. It would have been nice to have some spray paint so I could do the whole thing purple. We used purple since that's the liturgical color of lent.
In the yellow egg for the resurrection, I put in an angel. We actually happened to have this weird
Grow Your Own Guardian Angel thing. It actually fits very nicely into our yellow egg when it's small. :-)
In resurrection egg sets, the last egg is empty to symbolize the empty tomb on Easter morning. That's a great idea, but I honestly feel like it's a little disappointing for kids to get to the last egg and *gasp*!... nothing's in it. So I really like having the angel in ours. You can get little wooden angels at Michael's, or you could also symbolize an angel with a white feather from an "angel wing". Or you could leave your Easter egg empty- totally up to you. I also considered putting candy inside and taping it shut, not to be opened until Easter.
These eggs really are a great tool for teaching your kids about the stations of the cross! They're fun, they're hands on, and the egg delivery makes them appealing during this Easter prep time. We've really enjoyed these! If you're interested in this, you really should check out my post on
Stations of the Cross boxes, and my post on how to make
Catholic resurrection eggs. :-)
To give credit where credit is due, I'm pretty sure Resurrection eggs originated from the children's book
Benjamin's Box: The Story of the Resurrection Eggs
. I've never seen this book in real life, but I would like to get one for my kids and check it out. I'll let you know if I do! :-)
And if you're not the "do it yourself" kind, you can order sets of
Resurrection Eggs
that are already made, although you can't buy stations of the cross eggs.
The idea for a Stations of the Cross Box came from Irene on a string at
4 Real Forums, so these Stations of the Cross eggs have been inspired from all over the internet! Needless to say I'm happy with the turn out! :-)
