Good Friday ~ Crown of Thorns Bread

Teaching the kids about Easter and Holy Week has always proved to be a challenge for me. But this year we had a lot of fun learning about Easter and all the important moments leading up to it. While the Easter bunny can be a fun idea, I feel that Easter is too important to cloud it with the bunny. Maybe that’s a little prudish, but the special moments that we remember during this week are so great in number that the secular aspects add a little more than seems necessary. Aaand, since I bring the fun just about anywhere I go, we of course had a good time on our journey through Holy Week. I’ve also gotten a lot of ideas for how to do it in the years to come. But one thing I discovered that we had fun doing today was making our daily bread into the crown of thorns.

Judge me not by the ugliness of my pan. It is very, very well loved and frequently used. My pretty pan was occupied, so ole’ reliable was brought out today. We made our bread dough as we normally do. (Click here for our bread recipe) But rather than putting it in a buttered pan to rise and bake, I cut the dough into three parts and rolled them into long strands. Then we braided the dough and formed a ring out of the braid. And to top it all off we added “thorns” (toothpicks) to the dough. That was definitely the kids’ favorite part. So we let our dough rise and when it got nice and full we baked it.

For added fun and to aid in relating the actions of Christ to ourselves, any time one of the kids committed an unprompted act of love, whether in word or deed, we removed a toothpick from our bread. I do so wish I could tell you that our dough was empty of toothpicks by the end of today. Sadly, I can not….it was kind of a rough day. Not as full of love as one would hope. Ahh well. Can’t win them all. I blame allergies. And pollen.