Easter Kick Off - The Good Shepherd Activity

A (age 11), kicked off our Easter fun this afternoon, by preparing the salt dough tomb for our Resurrection scene.


It's still cooling and hardening, after spending part of the afternoon in the oven, and won't be ready to be set up with the Little People from our Nativity set until tomorrow.


In the meantime, I pulled out our cardboard building set, and had the children create a pen...


...around 100 sheep I printed across three pages, and T numbered for me. I forget where I found the sheep template, but almost any sheep coloring sheet, printed in thumbprint size, would do.


I actually printed two sets of 100 sheep - one set, numbered in black, and placed inside the pen, to work as "stalls", and one cut apart, and numbered in blue...


...to be spread out in the "fields" outside the pen.


Then, the girls worked as shepherds, bringing in the flock, making sure there was one matching sheep for each "stall" inside the pen...


While they sorted and counted the sheep, I set about mixing up a batch of sheep cookies, to go along with a follow up story...


...just not the story I had in mind. When I set up the activity, I was thinking of Jon and the Little Lost Lamb, the Arch book I had as a child. It tells the parable of the 99 and 1 lost sheep from Luke 15: 1-7.


So, before I slipped away to make the cookies, I swiped one of the sheep from the table, and hid it nearby, for the girls to search for...


...once their sorting was complete, and they realized one sheep was missing.


As it turns out, The Good Shepherd Arch book we have now tells the parable of the Good Shepherd and the Sheep Gate from John 10:1-18, instead.


But, The Good Shepherd works just as well with the pen, and the sheep (and the cookies), and has an even better lead into Easter, since the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. So, even though it wasn't the lesson I was planning - it was all Good in the end.

It's great to be a homeschooler.