I want my children to treasure and look forward to celebrating the resurrection of our Savior at Easter as much as they anticipate Christmas and the birth of our Savior.

For the next several days, I would like to share with you our family activities focusing on the Passion Week. Most of these ideas are from the Thriving Families ministry of Focus on the Family, with a Cobb family flourish. It is a start for our family that I hope will grow each year to come.

Today I made Jackson and Lauren palm branches out of toilet paper rolls and green construction paper. Thanks to wonderful Sunday School teachers, the kids had already been refreshed on the events of Palm Sunday, which we celebrated this morning with our church. After lunch as a family, we sat on the floor with our palm branches, and Matt read the account in the book of Matthew (while I tried to keep the kids from hitting each other with the palm branches or taking the other’s palm branch).

Then we had a parade. Just like the crowd threw their garments on the road as Jesus passed by, we found blankets from all over the house and created a path around the living room.

Jackson waves his palm branch

We marched and raced on the path shouting “Hosanna!! Hosanna!!!” We gathered stuffed animal friends to join the celebration, positioning them on the sides of the road.

Then Matt pretended to be the colt of the donkey, and Jackson rode him around the circle as Jesus did into Jerusalem. I tried to let Lauren ride on my back too, but she wouldn’t hold on.

We recreate the Triumphal Entry

Most importantly, we emphasized that Jesus is our King and we can worship Him, too!