Are you looking for fun Easter Traditions for your family? Traditions are a type of glue that holds families together and builds enduring memories.
Fun traditions don’t have to be expensive, elaborate or logical – some can be downright silly. But for kids, having consistent events throughout the year is something that adds stability and anticipation to life.
Here are 11 different Easter traditions and crafts that are part of our family’s history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Jelly Bean Trails
Jellybean trails are a real kid favorite. On Easter Eve, Steve spent at least an hour weaving five trails of jellybeans—one for each kid—all over the house.
Each jellybean trail ended at an elusive basket filled with goodies. Sometimes the basket was outside in a tree or hidden in the clothes dryer. There would be a series of clues, jellybeans, another clue, and more jellybeans.
The picture is just one example of how we’d start a jellybean trail with either a special item belonging to the child or a cute name tag (the carpet was always vacuumed before starting this tradition).
Easter String Balls
Several years ago, we created beautiful colored string balls and hung them on our Easter tree . . . really just a giant indoor ficus tree that we decorated with lights and the balls.
We created the balls by dipping colored string in watered-down white craft glue (such as Elmer’s). The string is wrapped numerous times around a small balloon. We use small balloons purchased from The Dollar Store.
When the string dries, the balloon is popped and the broken balloon pieces are removed. Because the glue on the string is dried the ball retains its shape. It’s a fun craft project for kids and they make great decorations.
Marble Eggs
Annette has been collecting these for years. She’s collected dozens of these stone eggs from trips to Mexico, garage sales and sales at Barnes & Noble.
She now displays them on Easter grass in a cut-glass bowl. Simple and elegant . . . and non-breakable . . . except for anything they might get dropped on! If you have children under the age of five years old, you may want to hold off on including these in your décor. You can get them on Amazon here.
Related Article: Stores That Will Price Match Amazon Today!
Easter Candle Centerpiece
The centerpiece on our dining room table is made up of pastel-colored pillar candles, colorful plastic eggs and lots of pastel-colored curling ribbon all arranged on a white wooden tray.
You can get plastic Easter eggs inexpensively on Amazon.
Church Events
Church celebrations are a big part of our annual Easter traditions. A church near us puts on a Passion Play (recounting a different aspect of the Resurrection story) every year – with awesome music, drama, and pageantry. Of course, there are sunrise services and other church services on Good Friday to participate in.
Wooden Cross
Outside our front door, we have a 5-foot tall wooden cross made from two 2 X 4s. On top of the cross we place a “crown of thorns,” and on the crossbar, we’ve painted the words “He is Risen.” No matter what faith you practice, there are numerous decorations you can use to reflect your religious traditions. Get more specific measurements here.
Resurrection Eggs
A Resurrection Eggs set consists of 12 plastic eggs, and each egg contains a Bible verse and an item representing a part of the Easter story.
We pass the eggs around and read the verses as we stand in a circle to remember the true reason for our hope and our celebration.
Easter Egg Decoration
We’ve done the traditional Easter egg dye kits and they were fun for a while. But our best decorated Easter eggs were created using model car paint that we floated in plastic margarine tubs. When we dipped the eggs in it created beautiful colored swirls on the eggs. Because we were using enamel paint, they took several hours to dry, but they look beautiful.
Better Homes and Gardens website has a great article on lots of different ways to decorate Easter Eggs.
We took a huge brandy snifter and put a thick layer of Easter grass in the bottom and placed several spotted plastic eggs on top of the grass. These are a very easy and colorful addition to our holiday décor.
Water balloon launchers
The younger kids really loved this last year. We set up a pile of boxes and let each person try their hand at knocking the boxes down by shooting balloons with the water balloon launcher. It wasn’t as easy as we thought.
Wiffle Ball
We know that Wiffle Ball has nothing to do with Easter, but it is a fun game to play in our cul-de-sac. We don’t run the bases but play the game based on how far you hit the ball.
- Hit the ball past the first chalked line is a single;
- 2nd chalked line is a double;
- 3rd chalked line is a triple;
- 4th chalked link is a home run.
Amazon carries Wiffle balls and bats at good prices.
Easter Egg Hunt
We usually do this in our backyard using plastic eggs filled with candy and some coins. We count the number of eggs and divide them by the number of children participating. Then we tell each child that they should try to find a specific number of eggs.
And we also tell the older kids that we’ve hidden some in special locations for them, so they should leave the ones that are left in the open for the younger kids.
If your family has a few Easter traditions, some of these ideas could add new excitement to your day. And if you’ve never thought about creating traditions for Easter, this may be the year to try a few.
The Easter Traditions Continue
All of these activities and decorations have become a part of our Easter celebration at one time or another. The kids loved participating in the crafting and the set up each year – and always looked forward to their jellybean trail . . . even into their late teens.
Just a couple of years ago, when youngest daughter Abbey was dating Collin (now husband) she insisted that he had to experience an Economides Easter jelly bean trail.
We all laughed and took pictures of this strong young man crawling and grabbing up gobs of jelly beans and Cadbury mini chocolate eggs as he followed the trail to the prize of an Easter basket filled with goodies that Abbey and Annette picked out, especially for him.
More Easter Traditions for Families?
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What nice bunch of traditions. At our church in between two services we have a traditional Easter egg hunt for the little kids,with lots of help and re-hiding the eggs for them to find.
The older kids (think middle school aged) would have their own hunt with clues based on the Easter story:a cross,a crown of thorns,palms,pieces of silver(we used nickels) etc. I have lots of great memories of our kids and their friends hunting for eggs and doing many messy crafts and having lots of fun and community at all the big events in the church year.
Ann your church sounds like a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing what they do!