Easter is coming and with it the reminder of our Savior’s resurrection. We made this tender visual reminder of the empty tomb years ago and bring it out for use every Easter. The children love to roll back the stone to find the tomb is empty! Even a toddler can understand its meaning.
You can easily make your own Resurrection Morning visual aid with these directions.
You will need:
- piece of cardboard or poster board
- plastic or paper bowl
- small paper plate (or poster board to cut one from)
- sharp knife or scissors
- chalk pastels, crayons or markers
- aluminum foil
- large brad
- tape
- a few sheets of toilet paper
1. If using scrap cardboard, cut a panel approx. 12 x 18″. Glue stick a large piece of construction paper to the front. If using poster board, cut the poster board in half. Draw a hillside scene.
2. Trace lightly around the bowl rim in the hill you have drawn. Cut a hole out of the cardboard 1″ smaller than the bowl rim you traced.
3. Cover the inside of the bowl with aluminum foil, creasing it in the center to create a little shelf across the bowl’s depth. This will resemble the inside of the tomb where Jesus was laid.
4. Lay the bowl on the backside of the display, over the cut opening in the cardboard. Face the bowl towards the hole and tape it securely in place.
5. Cover the small paper plate with aluminum foil.
6. On the front side of the display, lay the aluminum covered circle over the hole to cover the view of the bowl. Secure in place with a brad on one edge so the circle resembles a stone that can rotate or roll away from the opening.
7. Fold a square of toilet paper to look like the cloths that they wrapped Jesus’s body in that were left in the empty tomb after Jesus was resurrected. Lay these on the “shelf” in the wall of the tomb (bowl). Rotate the stone back in place to hide the bowl so that children may discover for themselves that . . .
“He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.
Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”
—Matthew 28:6
