Easter Countdown~8 week Sunday Gospel Study

First Week of Easter

I don't know about you, but Mondays are the hardest day of our week!  This was a good transition from our Easter break last week.  We started this project to increase our faith and understanding of the Easter season by studying the 8 Sunday gospels from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.   I wanted a "visual" to help the kids see the weeks unfold into the Ascension and Pentecost.  We came up with this tri-fold that I had on hand from the Dollar Tree.  Then we built in a snack, a craft or two, and a couple of fun celebrations for Good Shepherd Sunday, The Ascension, and Pentecost!  This was a fun journey and bible study.

Our idea was to highlight the theme for each week's gospel by studying the readings that unfold after the Resurrection.  We included feast days and other things that were pertinent to the week we are studying.  This was a good opportunity to study what Jesus had to say to His disciples, the first leaders of the Catholic Church, after his death and resurrection.

 This is the 1st Sunday, Easter Sunday.  The Gospel according to John 20:1-9

2nd Week of Easter

This was the 2nd Sunday block.  The Gospel according to John 20: 9-31.  We read and discussed the Gospel of John about Thomas who doubted and had to see and touch the wounds of Jesus himself.  We focused on Jesus' response which was "Believe!"  We also noticed that Jesus repeatedly greeted His disciples with "Peace be with you."  And of course we talked about the Divine Mercy which I wrote about in another post.

Third Week of Easter

The Third Sunday study is centered around the Gospel of John 21: 1-19.  Jesus reveals himself at the Sea of Tiberias (Sea of Galilee).  We took this opportunity to find it on the map!

As we have seen all week, through the readings, Jesus is the Bread of Life.  His resounding message at the end of the gospel is "Follow Me." ~John 21:19~  He is the Bread of Life.  We noticed the pattern of 3's in this 3rd Sunday.  This is the 3rd time Jesus revealed himself to his disciples after being raised from the dead. (John 21:14).  And Jesus asks Peter 3 times, "Do you love me?"  This is reflected in our next block.  And we are SO glad Peter said YES!  We will practice saying "Yes" to Jesus and telling him we love him.

We followed our study with a fun snack.  Princess helped Superboy count out 153 fish like Jesus gave to his disciples when they cast their nets over their boat. (John 21:11)

Then we carved out a loaf of french bread into the shape of a boat.  After decorating a cookie sheet with blue construction paper and saran wrap, we were ready to set sail!  We thought this was fitting to the reading when Jesus invited his disciples to breakfast and gave them bread and fish. (John 21:12-13)  We used the photo (below) of an ancient vessel as our guide.  Different shaped pretzels were added to make the seats, oars and net.

Then we were ready to fill the boat with the 153 fish!  Jesus said to them: "Come, have breakfast." And none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they realized it was the Lord.  (John 21:12)

The FINAL TOUCH was to add a few disciples!  We counted 7 names in the Gospel story.  We made them from pretzel sticks and mini marshmallows.  Peanut butter was our glue and black frosting was used to make the faces and hair, applied with toothpicks.  I forgot to mention that we used a large pretzel stick and a triangle tortilla piece for the sail, "glued" with peanut butter!

Here is Jesus proclaiming "FOLLOW ME." (John 21:19)  We will be doing our best to do as Jesus asks us!

Then we got to eat the "fish and bread", like the disciples:)

Fourth Week Of Easter

We celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday with a special family meal!  It can be found in a separate post titled Good Shepherd Sunday.  This is how we decorated out bible board this week:

The Fifth Week of Easter

This week we are learning about the great commandment of LOVE!  The gospel reading was John 13:31-35.  Jesus asks us to love one another as He has loved us.  He states that "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  Our bible board reflects the heart of Jesus and all the ways that we should love, written inside the heart.

It is also the Month of May so we are talking and doing a lot of activities to celebrate "Mary's Month."
The Sixth Week of Easter
This was Mother's Day!  We celebrated with the planting of our Mary Garden so not much was written on the board this week.  The garden is a lot of planning and preparation but always SO worth it!  It's one of my favorite traditions.
The Seventh Week of Easter 
The Seventh week of Easter is Ascension Sunday!  This year it also fell on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima so we combined our fun and celebrations with an Ascension Lunch.


The Eighth Week of Easter
The eighth week of Easter is Pentecost Sunday!  We ran out of gas with updating our board by the end of the 50 days...can you tell!?  However, we had fun preparing for Pentecost with this fun craft.  We sure had a blessed Pentecost celebration to close out the Easter season!

Easter is officially over but we sure enjoyed learning more about this fantastic 50 days!