Easter Resurrection Idea

I was intrigued by this Easter activity when I read about it at The Exclamation Point, and decided to try it out with my children at the earliest possible convenience. That day was today!

All you need for this Easter lesson is two white helium balloons, a plastic, disposable shopping bag, and a few cute kids!
I started by having my two lovely assistants put together the resurrection puzzle that we have, and asked what they knew about the resurrection.

We talked about how when Jesus Christ died, his body was placed in a tomb, and three days later, he was resurrected and his body and spirit went to heaven. He had risen.
This was part of what we call His Atonement, which was the greatest event in all of the history of the world.
Because Christ was resurrected, we will ALL rise again too. When we die, our spirits and bodies will eventually be reunited again forever, just like Jesus Christ's was.

But one major difference between us and Christ is this: Christ was sinless, but we all have made mistakes and sinned against God.
We placed a plastic shopping bag on our balloon to represent our sins. Then we let our balloon go.

The girls noticed quickly that although our balloon did rise, it was not able to join Christ's balloon. (For no unclean thing can dwell with God. 1 Ne. 10:21)
That made us sad. I asked the girls what we could do about it?

They said that we needed to get rid of those sins, so that we can be with Christ again and stay in his presence forever...and that to do that, we need to repent.

Having recently reviewed the hope-filled path of Repentance, we talked briefly about what it takes to repent. We need to ask in prayer for God to forgive us of our individual sins.

The girls were happy to see that after repenting (or removing the shopping bag) their balloon was able now to join Christ's balloon...and stay there.
And isn't that what we all desire...to feel light and happy, and free like that balloon?? And to be with those we love most forever??? That is the happy, wonderful message of Easter, and a promise that we can count on and apply in our lives each and every day!!

This was such a fun and simple activity. The balloons cost me less than $2 each.
And the girls had a fun time playing with the balloons. I don't think they'll forget this lesson, and it'll be a fun memory between two friends. I am planning on having Autumn teach this to her siblings later today.
Now, I sort of tailored this object lesson to what I wanted to teach my kids, so it's not exactly the same as the idea I read about. You can read how she did her lesson here for more insights. One small tip: Make sure the strings on your balloons are extra long so that you can do this object lesson over and over again and get the balloons down from the ceiling easily!

You can find 30 different Christ-centered Easter activities on my Easter Ideas Page We will be adding more ideas like this one this Easter season.

PS - Yesterday, at Primary, the girls were able to learn from actual witnesses of Christ's resurrection...role-played by various adults in our ward. It was such a cool experience, and you can read about the idea on Sugardoodle. Since the children had recently reviewed what happened after Christ was resurrected, we didn't need to go into much detail on that during today's lesson. OH, here's the link for the RESURRECTION SHARING TIME.

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