I have to admit, I was a little indecisive about the garden this year...life has just been so busy, but then I spotted a few small plants for sale at our local grocery store last week and my heart said, do it! I already had the wicker planting basket (found at the dump last year), and the tomb I made a few years ago out of leftover clay from a pottery making workshop for children we attended. 
I went out for a walk in our nearby forest and collected the moss, and found this perfect rock that happened to break in half when I dropped it. It works well for the stone waiting to be rolled away when Jesus rises from the dead. 
I raided my garden for a few hens and chicks. They won't be missed! 
And these felted rocks were an experiment my two-year-old and I took part in last week as she had her kitchen sink bath. Honestly, this is the best way to felt rocks...the toddler will help and there is lots of soap and warm water available already. I love how these appear to be moss covered. 
Here's a close-up of the tomb, with a piece of slate for Jesus to lay upon. 
And a path made from river rocks. 
I love the late afternoon sunlight in this photo... 
More felted rocks... 
If you haven't already, please go and read Ann's post about the Easter garden tradition. This is truly one of the best pedagogical tools for instructing young children about the Easter story. It will come alive for them if you place this garden in a spot where they may look at it, touch it and play with it. I have crafted a set of peg dolls for our children to act out the tale of our salvation with and hope to incorporate Ann's tradition of creating a beeswax modelling clay caterpillar to hide under the moss on Good Friday, to emerge on Easter Sunday as a butterly. Stay tuned for a post about that soon...
What a beautiful idea to use in teaching our children about His Resurrection! I had never seen a little garden like this before... looks like something we'll need to do this week with the kids! Thanks so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThis is simply beautiful, Erin. Definitely something my kids would love to do. So Montessori!! Nice job:)
ReplyDeleteI created a similar garden in our classroom but have made it lifeless for now...dried moss, a twig tree, a dry pond, pine cone shrubs. When they come back to school after Easter weekend, I will have transformed it into a green oasis of beauty...these little ones can grasp the "what appears to be dead is not always dead" imagery. Yours is enchanting.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! I'll have to do this next year. Easter has come to life for me this year, really for the first time. I blogged about our Easter tree recently.
ReplyDeletehttp://chocoeyes.blogspot.com/2011/04/watercolor-easter-egg-tree.html
Becca
this is fantastic!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback ladies! Stephanie, I love that idea of creating a dormant garden and then transforming it. In many years we have sort of done that with our nature table. It is a desert for Lent, representing Jesus' time in the desert. The children would add one new rock each day until the bowl of rocks was empty after forty days in the desert. Lovely imagery for them to ponder. I think it is so important to bring the faith down to their level and not try to impose too much intellectuallism on them when the children are very young. They are all heart and we must respond to that in our teaching.
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