Happy Palm Sunday everyone! If you want a meaningful tradition for Palm Sunday that doesn’t take much time and no money, go here, courtesy of Emily Belle Freeman. Then go here if you want the complete list of her daily Easter traditions for Holy Week.
Then go here if you want a free printable set of coloring pages which you can also use for a banner that depict the events, one for each day of Holy Week.
I found the book shown above at my local public library and started reading it. So far I’m enjoying it. So far, it is the only chapter book I have found that presents the story of Easter engagingly and succinctly. Go here to learn more about it at the author’s website. I don’t agree with everything the author says so far and I’ll probably find more I disagree with, but I still enjoy it. It will probably help me remember the Easter store more easily and learn more about the Savior.
Photos Above and Below Credit: John Hilton III YouTube Channel
The above photo shows the tomb of Jesus with a bed and the stone that rolls away, a lovely homemade Easter decoration by Katrina Hilton. I’m showing it as a screenshot from the video below, with fun ideas for a Christ-centered Easter from Katrina’s parents. With Easter a week away, it’s time for last minute prep for our Holy Week celebration that starts tomorrow with Palm Sunday. I love the ideas that my children’s second cousin, John Hilton III, and his wife Lani Hilton, share in the video below. In the video, John shares that Lani has also compiled the ideas on her website here. I love that Lani emphasizes you don’t have to spend money; you can make or find things around your home. They also make clay lamps and light them oil to celebrate Parable Wednesday. They got that idea from the book that John’s aunt and uncle wrote, A Christ-centered Easter.
In the video, Lani talks about her “Good Friday” bag. She has collected some items she keeps in a bag to pull out so her family can talk about the people involved with Good Friday, like a sword and the crown of thorns, shown below. The sword goes with the centurion who stood at the foot of the cross and said, “Surely this was the Son of God.” I just love the way she explained it, how she has told her children that the centurion saw the signs of Jesus that caused him to recognize that Jesus is the Son of God. He then testified of Jesus as the son of God. Then she has asked them what signs they have seen that shows them that Jesus is the Son of God. This then opens up the space for a mini-family testimony meeting.
I agree with the quote that the Hiltons share from Elder Gary E. Stevenson, who quotes N.T. Wright:
“We should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts. … This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity.” Elder Gary E. Stevenson, Liahona, May 2023
Yes!!! I love it!! So if you want more…here you go:
Go here to learn about a book on activities, including games and crafts, for the Holy Week.
Go here for a free beautiful banner/coloring pages that shows the Holy Week timeline.
Go here to my family read-alouds and traditions site for spring, and scroll down under “April” to see even more picture books and family traditions for Easter.
Go here for my list of poetry, songs, and stories for your Family Devotionals to use this spring, even after Easter!
This movie is so good and inspiring! It’s also based on a true story! I got to see this movie, One Life, just last week. Last Friday, my husband texted me saying he wanted to see it later that night to celebrate his birthday. It was playing an hour away, so we made the drive and I’m so glad we did! It was so worth it! We weren’t having a special birthday dinner or family party that night to celebrate because most of my children couldn’t join us because of work or other commitments, meaning we postponed our family party to Sunday. To be able to watch this high quality of a movie, to in order to celebrate instead of a party made his birthday night still feel special.
This movie is based on the true story of Nicholas Winton, a heroic man who saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. He arranged the “Kindertransport” system to transport children from Prague to England to foster parents. Sadly, most of them then lived in England for the rest of their childhood and did not see their parents again.
It was so providential that my husband texted me saying it he wanted to watch it, as just that morning, for our homeschooling Morning Basket, we had read a new picture book about Nicholas! It’s shown below.
Nicholas’ story is soooo amazing! I encourage everyone to read the picture book, including all the back matter at the end of the book, after the story, and then go watch the movie. The back matter will help you understand the movie, especially the flashbacks. Anthony Hopkins did a great job portraying the older Nicholas. Helena Bonham Carter, who played the fairy godmother in the live action Cinderella, portrays Nicholas’ mother. She helped him organize the transport of the children. I love that it showed family members working together intergenerationally along with friends. I also love that it shows a husband and wife enjoying marriage, supporting each other. (See my list of movies over here about marriage.) So, if you want a feel-good movie to inspire someone to find and pursue a mission, this is definitely one to watch! It’s not really a family movie, as under-12s will probably find it slow and boring, and too sad and/or disturbing, as they probably won’t understand the historical context. It’s perfect for teens, though, especially teen scholars or scholars of any age who are hungry to see people fighting for a cause, to help them develop their own sense of mission.
Want a teacher’s resource guide to the book (which could spill over to the movie)? Go here.
Want more ideas of heroes to study, in picture books, and movie? Go here to the Fall page of my Read Alouds and Family Traditions site, then scroll down to the October section to find a list of picture books and chapter books about heroes. A few movies about heroes are found under the “activities” list under October.
You may have heard by now of the purchase of the Kirtland Temple, in Kirtland Ohio, by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the Community of Christ church. This is amazing and so exciting! Some of the most spectacular miracles in this dispensation have occurred there. For example, it was in this temple that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon saw Jesus Christ in all His glory. You can read about that in Doctrine and Covenants 110. See over here for a summary of that magnificent event. It was also here that Joseph Smith saw the Old Testament prophets Moses, Elias, and Elijah, and received the keys of authority that each one held. See Doctrine and Covenants 110. Joseph, in this temple, also had the vision of the three degrees of glory of heaven. You can read the account of that here, in Doctrine and Covenants 76. The Church also bought some properties in Nauvoo, like Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store, and the Mansion House, along with other things. You can read a summary of the news of the purchase and the historical significance here. (My family visited Nauvoo a few years ago, as we have ancestors who lived here, on both my side and my husband’s side. You can read my different posts about that here and here.)
I have included some stories and commentary about the Kirtland Temple below for added insight into this historic event.
It’s Pi Day! Here’s a perfect board game for that! It’s called Pizza Theory, the Pizza Toppings Game!
This is a fun game to bring up pi and how pi relates to circles. It’s also a game that is full of strategy and suspense, yet it’s very simple. Read the back of the box below then watch Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower explain how it plays in the video below that. I love that it’s quick, like 15 minutes quick, simple, everyone plays at once, and it’s full of strategy. It’s for three players, which is unusual. Most games are for even-numbered players. It also has a two-player variant and an anchovy expansion. We played it today with friends to celebrate Pi Day and served pie at the end. Fun! The cardboard components are thick and sturdy and the game even comes in what looks like a pizza box. I give it 5 out of 5 stars!
If you are looking for a beautifully illustrated book that explains to children why we celebrate Easter with Easter eggs, this is the book! It tells the story of a little boy who has a sister who gets sick right before Easter. She is so sick that he has to go live with other people. While he is there he learns about Easter eggs and how they relate to Jesus and His resurrection. Then he looks forward to telling his sister all about what he learned.
I like the beautiful illustrations in this book. I also like that it shows the messy reality that sometimes, at least in the northern hemisphere, it can still be snowy and ice weather when Easter happens. The book shows the boy hunting for Easter eggs with frost on the trees and flowers. So many Easter books are just about the Easter bunny and eggs. I love that this book talks about Jesus and His life and sacrifice and resurrection. It is fun that it mentions the store in the author’s companion book, The Legend of the Candy Cane.
Easter is less than three weeks away! I’m excited to share about this darling book today, shown above. I highly recommend it! This book is amazing because it gives you a TON of resources to celebrate every single day of Holy Week, the week before Easter. These resources will help your family learn and remember what happened on that day with Jesus during his last week of life. This is perfect for using for your family devotional that week or your Morning Basket time. (Go here if you don’t know what Morning Basket time is.) I found this book at the thrift store last year for 75 cents! What a treasure! I have been waiting for months to finally use it and now I can! I don’t have to return it to the library like I had to with the copy I had last year.
The author Wendee Wilcox Rosborough is the daughter of one of my favorite speakers and authors, Brad Wilcox. (You can listen to two of Brad’s speeches by clicking on the top two results over here.)
Here is the way she labels the days of the Holy Week in the book:
Palm Sunday
Cleansing Monday
Parable Tuesday
Betrayal Wednesday
Last Supper Thursday
Good Friday
Salvation Saturday
Easter Sunday
I love that! Then for each day she has the following resources:
-a piece of art showing Jesus, reprinted right there in the book, to study for art appreciation, with a little bit about the artist
-a scripture to memorize
-at least one video to watch about what Jesus did that day, with the QR code to pull it up fast with your device
-songs from the Children’s Songbook
-activities, including service projects, games, a recipe or craft
Here are some examples of what the author includes in the book: making an Easter story wreath, cleaning your home in a ten-minute blitz, playing a game with small candies to illustrate the parable of the talents, playing Parable Charades with play dough, doing a secret service project for a neighbor, making hot cross buns, making unleavened bread, having a missionary egg hunt, making paper lilies, and an apostles scavenger hunt. I love that she even has a bonus section of activities for when General Conference falls on Easter Sunday.
This book is easily adaptable to families who have members of all ages. Most of these activities are simple enough for toddlers to enjoy and easily changed to be more engaging for teens and adults. She gives so many suggestions, it would be hard to do them all. So don’t feel overwhelmed or compelled to do them all. If you are pressed for time, I suggest you at least you do the art study, recite the scripture, and watch the videos when your most or all of your family is together for dinner, or whatever meal they are most likely to be together.
This is such a wonderful skeleton or backbone guide for your family to use year after year in making memorable Easter family traditions for the whole week leading up to Easter. I love the idea of making Easter as memorable as Christmas time. This book will help you do that with very little prep time, effort or money.
Want to learn the back story of why Wendee Rosborough wrote the book? Go here.
Want more Easter traditions?
Check out my compilation of Emily Belle Freeman’s traditions for Holy Week here.
Check out my website here, under the April section, for activities, read-aloud books, and movies.
Check out my list of Easter stories and music, and do one a day, here.
Here’s a NEW interview with Sarah Mackenize, homeschooling mom, author, and host of the Read Aloud Revival. It’s so good! Listen/watch below! Sarah Mackenzie is a huge proponent of reading aloud, especially using it for homeschooling. You don’t need to be a homeschool mom to benefit from learning from her talk in the video about parenting, reading aloud, and homeschooling.
Thanks to the Pints with Aquinas YouTube Channel, hosted by Matt Fradd, a Catholic dad. Warning, it’s long so I’ve copied and pasted the timestamps from the YouTube video page below. That way you can zero in on something if you are pressed for time. Then the last two videos below are clips from the top video.
My game of the week is Placing the Past by Ginger Fox Games. It’s a timeline game, but different from others I’ve played like Timeline and Chronology. In this game, players are each given 5 cards. Each card mentions one specific historical event. One side has mention of the event. The other side has the date of the event and more details about it. See below.
Each player takes a turn presenting his or her hand of the cards in chronological order to the other players. You can choose to omit two of the cards if you aren’t sure on those ones. The other players look at the order you made. If any player thinks you are wrong about your order, he or she can challenge you by ringing the bell. Then that person gets to rearrange the order. Then the cards are turned over and you all get to see who was right. If the original order was correct, the first player keeps the cars. If the correcting player was correct that player gets the cards. If no one was right, no one gets the cards. Each card represents a point. The player with the most points wins. (Note the color scheme in the photo above is outdated, the cards are now yellow on one side, blue on the other. Much better scheme I think.)
Image Credit Above and Below: amazon.com
I like this game! It is one of those filler games that you can play in between bigger games, or even on its own if you just have 10-15 minutes to spare and want a game that’s educational but not too heavy. Like after a long day of work when you want to relax but still want to learn a little. I had it in my dining room last week and after Sunday family dinner, my daughter and her husband picked it up to play when I was in the living room reading to their boys. It was fun to listen to them play and talk about the events and what they were learning. The box says 3 or more players, but they played just with two and still enjoyed it.
I just wish it had pictures. That would make it so much more fun. Because it involves a knowledge of world and U.S. history, it is for ages 14 and up, as most kiddos by age 14 have learned the basics of those topics. If you are playing with people younger than 14, who have less than a basic knowledge of history, you might want to ditch the “ring-the-bell-to-challenge” mechanism as it might be too discouraging. The description on amazon, and shown in the image above, says it’s “hilarious.” That’s an over-the-top claim. I can see it maybe being hilarious if you played with people who love history, who have a memory of dates, who love to be competitive, and you played with the bell, as then it’s a race to see who can spot the mistakes first and ring the bell. What would it make it super fun for me would be to play like the game Pictomania where everyone does their work at the same time (drawing a picture in the case of Pictomania, arranging a timeline in the case of this game). Then you look at the other timelines and race to ring the bell. I guess it could be a party game or an icebreaker game if you have the right crowd of people who enjoy intellectual challenges, especially with that modification I just suggested.
You could also play this game in other ways, the way Timeline is played, over here, or the way Chronology is played. (Chronology has similar cards as Timeline, without pictures though, but it’s played the opposite of Timeline where the goal is to gain cards instead of get rid of them, and the first to five cards wins.) I enjoy reading all the text on the cards to learn about different people, places, and events. The cards contain fascinating information, like for example, John Lennon’s real given middle name was “Winston” after Winston Churchill, then he changed it to his wife Yoko’s name. I never knew that! I also didn’t know that the Nintendo company started in 1886 (can you believe that?! It’s true, according to the card in this game. It was started as a playing card company way before it made video games. If you don’t believe me, go search it!) I like that it has history from the last 30 years to help me learn that era. Even though I lived through it, LOL, I’ve been in mom/survival mode so haven’t always known what was going on in the outside world as far as pop culture is concerned. Anyway, it’s a great game, but because of the lack of pictures, I give it 4 out of 5 stars. You could definitely use it in your homeschooling with your 14 and ups, maybe even 12 and up for those younger scholars who feel knowledgeable about history.
Want to learn more about using games in homeschooling, aka gameschooling? Go here.
What did you learn from RootsTech this past week? I watched a lot of different livestreams and YouTubers talking about it. I am so excited about all the new stuff happening.
Here are some different videos to share what happened. The official description of the video above from its YouTube page says the following:
“Family history enthusiasts worldwide gathered in Salt Lake City, Utah, from February 29 to March 2 for RootsTech 2024. The conference’s keynotes included Dred Scott descendant Lynne M. Jackson, award-winning actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth and FamilySearch President and CEO Steve Rockwood. Family Discovery Day featured late President M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Here’s an idea of one speaker’s preparation and anticipation that she had for the event. This is Sunny Morton, who has been involved every year since RootsTech started in 2011.
Family history/genealogy isn’t just about preserving stories and records of dead people. It’s about getting the records and stories preserved of our live family members. I love this video below that RootsTech showed at the event about how everyone’s story matters.
Here’s the description of the video below from its YouTube page:
“In a world that often celebrates the extraordinary, watch as five individuals who’ve led seemingly ordinary lives through their own eyes, are reminded of the indelible mark they’ve left on the hearts of their loved ones. We filmed their family members answering the question, “What makes your parent/grandparent extraordinary. The responses we received were nothing short of breathtaking— personal memories, touching anecdotes, and deep reflections shared together. Through the lens of personal stories, we recognize the transformative power of personal memories and experiences, and remember the importance of cherishing and celebrating the unsung heroes in our lives. Everyone’s story is worth remembering. Learn more here http://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/events/remember”
The biggest news out of RootsTech was that FamilySearch has three new features:
Shared Family Group Trees so you can share photos of living people with other living people and see the exact same version. In the past, you could only share and see photos of people who have passed away. For example, I could save photos of my children on each of their pages in FamilySearch, but they could not see these photos when they logged into their page. That’s all changed! Now we can share their photos and see the same page.
2. Full text search capabilities of three collections of records: U.S. Land Records, U.S. Probate Records, and Mexican Notarial Records. This is huge! Because of A.I., we can now search these records for words and not rely on indexed versions of these records to find information about people. The video below explains that.
3. FamilySearch now has FamilySearch Labs that allow you to explore potential features at FamilySearch before it is released to the general public, allowing the users to give feedback to make the features more user friendly.
More about that new stuff is below.
Photo Credit Above and Below: RootsTech YouTube Channel
Lynne Jackson, a great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott, gave the keynote address on Friday March 1. Dred Scott is the famous Scott of the infamous 1857 Supreme Court case Scott v. Sanford, which said that black Americans aren’t full citizens. Ouch! Common sense tells us how wrong that was. Ms. Jackson’s presentation was so amazing with all her slides explaining how general U.S. history has intertwined with her family history since that unjust decision by the Supreme Court was made. Her journey of discovery about her ancestor Dred Scott began years ago, when she first heard her Heavenly Father tell her “You should study Dred Scott.” Then, a few months, maybe years later, she heard her earthly father tell her the same thing. Thus began her call of learning about Dred Scott and being part of a legacy of healing and reconciliation.
She shared that Dred Scott was born as Sam Blow and showed a photo of the record of that name in the family Bible. She said that the Blow family bought her ancestor with the intent of setting him free. She also shared a photo of a charcoal drawing of Dred and his wife Harriet. She also shared photos of reconciliation between a representative of the Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the aforementioned case, and her family. A currently living family relative of Justice Taney publicly apologized to her family for the Supreme Court’s decision. This presentation was amazing!
I so loved hearing that story. You can watch it below, starting at the 1 hour, 38 minute mark.
I also loved hearing from Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, the founder of Connect Our Kids. She talked about how foster children benefit from learning who the history of their biological parents. She told a story of a young foster boy. His foster parents wanted to adopt him, but he didn’t want this. He didn’t think he was worth being adopted because he knew his biological parents’ history and was ashamed of it. When some kind person showed him his biological family tree, full of upright citizens, he was amazed. He then was willing to be adopted. You can learn more about Connect Our Kids here.
It would have been so cool to have toured the hall full of vendors. I love learning about all the products and apps connected to researching and telling family stories. Every year new stuff comes out for RootsTech to make the study and preservation of family history easier. It is like Christmas exploring all the cool techie things that are announced at RootsTech. Here’s a video below showing a sampler of the vendor hall. That DNA Painter software/app sounds so cool.
The crowning event of all was watching Elder M. Russell Ballard, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, share about his family and his testimony of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith. He has passed away but has left a beautiful legacy of love of the Lord, family, and service. Watch below. His part starts around the 16 minute mark. I also enjoyed hearing from Elder Gong, who is introduced around the 8 minute mark. Elder Gong is an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. He just oozes love of the Lord. One of my neighbors shared at church this past Sunday that she and her grandson got to meet Elder Gong last Saturday at RootsTech. She said that Elder Gong took the time to look into her grandson’s eyes and ask, “What is your name?” as they shook hands. There were so many people surrounding them, Elder Gong couldn’t hear the grandson’s reply and asked for it again. My neighbor expressed how touched she was that Elder Gong took the time to learn his name. She said she could just feel the love of God coming from him. That doesn’t surprise me. The Lord’s apostles love each one of us, as the Lord Jesus Christ does.
All in all, it was such a glorious weekend. I am so grateful for all the people who make it happen and all the tools and opportunities we have to study and preserve family history. My heart is overflowing.
Tree of Life Mothering 