Easter

The Guardians of Childhood is a series of children’s picture books and novels and the inspiration for DreamWorks’ Rise of the Guardians adaptation. The books are written and illustrated by author William Joyce, whose other works include George Shrinks, Santa Calls, A Day with Wilbur Robinson, and the much loved Rolie Polie Olie series, which has earned Joyce three Emmy awards.

A luminous new book series from William Joyce that redefines the icons of childhood: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Sandman, the Man in the Moon and many more. Published by Simon & Schuster, these books explore the mythology of childhood legends through vividly illustrated picture books and chapter books for young adults. In November of 2012, the series became an animated feature film from DreamWorks Animation:Rise of the Guardians.

We at “The Forever Years” love this series and the movie, because they epitomise the “magic of childhood”, the magic of “believing”. Many parents and carers disagree about the benefits to children of believing in characters such as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny and those of Christian faith often feel that the latter two detract from the true meaning of the festivals they represent. Leaving these arguments aside, however, the “magic of childhood” is a universal concept. We all have childhood memories of times which seemed “magical” or, perhaps for want of a better description, times filled with warmth and family, positive surprises and wonder. Most people have at least one such childhood memory, no matter how good or bad their other childhood experiences might have been. As adults, we are tasked with “paying the magic forward” and creating opportunities for our children to see that the world can, indeed, be an amazing and wonder-filled place.

The character of “Pitch Black”, who represents “the bogey man” or “monsters under the bed”, is a generalised depiction of childhood fears coming to life. He also seems to represent adult cynicism, a loss of the “wonder” of childhood.

Pitch is everything a child fears, and he thrives on the fear of children, taking a cruel delight in turning their pleasant dreams into nightmares. But what Pitch hates is when children overcome their fears and don’t believe in him, particularly when parents tell their kids that the Boogeyman is just a bad dream.

http://riseoftheguardians.wikia.com/wiki/Pitch_Black

In many ways we adults are the “Guardians of Childhood”. We choose how much cynicism, apathy or sometimes downright defeatism and lack of self-belief we impart to our kids, which in turn effects their outlook on life as they grow into adults… including their belief in themselves and their ability to influence the world around them. While childhood, and life in general, cannot be perfect or ideal all the time, striving to keep a sense of hope and wonder in our children’s “forever years” is giving them a gift which will stay with them throughout their lives… and which they will “pay forward” to their own children.

As Easter draws near, I thought I’d share some of the crafts we’ve been doing at our house– ideas shared are fun multiplied and great for all our children everywhere!

Easter Boxes

These are made from egg cartons with the labels peeled off. “Easter Bunny” can put each child’s Easter Eggs in their own special container on Easter Sunday… an especially good idea if you have more than one child and want to avoid arguments about whose eggs (or bunnies or chickens or whatever) are whose. Remember to get each child to write his or own name on their box. Use your imagination: they could be painted, decorated with cellophane,wrapping paper or glitter. So long as you keep an “Easter theme”. Here are some our children made:

2. Big Easter Egg Poster

Draw a large egg-shaped outline on some paper. With your kids, create a “collage” of shiny Easter Egg paper, Easter stickers, chickens, Easter bunnies, crosses, lambs or anything else you like that relates to Easter. Make sure every gap is filled so no paper shows (that can be the challenge for the kids). After it’s finished you can laminate it and then you’ll have a poster to use ever Easter. (You could do shapes other than eggs too, like crosses or chickens).

3. Crosses

These crosses can be cut out of cardboard then covered with tin foil. The tags here are the ones you get on bread bags… a good use for them, we thought. My 8 year old made this one at school.

4. An Easter Mural

Our kids seem to always enjoy making murals where they can let their imaginations run wild. This one was no egg-ception (sorry, couldn’t resist an egg joke). We bought blue and green paper and I cut the shape of hills out of the green and stuck them onto the blue “sky”. The kids did all the rest using Easter stickers and felt pens. We got our Easter stickers from the $2 shop, $2 for a big sheet. (None of the crafts here were particularly expensive to create).

Creating an “Easter Mural”

5. An Easter Tree

Every year the kids and I create an “Easter Tree”. Usually we start by going for a walk in the bush somewhere to collect dry twigs and branches. Then we come home and put our “collection” in a bucket (anchored with bluetak so the whole thing doesn’t fall over). We decorate it with anything related to Easter. This year we put toy chickens and rabbits, eggs and crosses made out of pipe cleaners on it. There are some beautiful ribbons with Easter patterns on them which can be used as “streamers”. We bought some years ago and bring then out each Easter. (Japanese friends came to stay one Easter, so the “tree” had their Easter decorations on it too).

6. Learning about Faberge Eggs

Last Easter the kids and I learned about “Faberge Eggs” and created this poster (we Google searched these images). We also looked at why Faberge created them for the Russian Royal Family and what materials they were made out of.

7. Free Drawing

Just doing drawings of anything related to Easter can be fun too. Our six year old created this picture.

We here at “The Forever Years” hope you have a Happy Easter with your children. We hope you have found these ideas helpful and would LOVE to hear of anymore you might have.