Tuesday, March 4, 2014

                 


          Making It Special...or Family Traditions


      In a world that seems insistent on shrinking the gap between the wonder and freedom of childhood, and the ever pressing indoctrination toward the
 “teenage baby”,  parents of today, must work even harder to preserve for their children, a world where innocence is revered, and wholesome, joyful activities abound.



     Over the years I have found, that Family Traditions are a very important part of creating for your children delightful experiences that a child will come to expect each year, and that will remain with them as they become parents themselves.  There is a sense of security that a child feels, knowing that each season has it’s special feasts, and each holiday, a continuity that tells them life is good, and love surrounds them.


One of our Family traditions was the gift of a painted wooden egg that each child received each Easter.  Not everyone celebrates the Resurrection of Christ, as Christians do,  but most people celebrate Easter in some way, if only as a Rite of Spring.

    Every spring, I would buy wooden eggs, enough for each one of my children.  At night after all the children were in bed, I would get out my paints, and create for each one a special “personalized” egg just for them.  It might have a picture of their favorite doll or teddy bear, a pony or a girl flying a kite, lambs or ducklings, depending on who was to be the recipient of the special egg.
The possibilities are endless, and even if you don’t have artistic talent, you can create a lovely egg using paint and stickers.
Seri's egg with her pony and sheltie.
Wooden Easter eggs painted for our children.

    On Easter Sunday morning, after church, we would have our Egg hunt for the Special Wooden Eggs.   I would make a small picture of what the egg looked like on paper, and each child was given the image of their egg.  Then they would rush out joyfully seeking their own Special Egg.  Of course, the baby child would find their egg in the grass, or near the base of a tree, while the older child had to actually search high and low to find their prize.


For those who don’t feed their children on candy, and sugar, this is a great way to have an Easter Egg Hunt, without all the mess, and hyperactivity.  We did both.  Later in the week we had a candy egg hunt using Herseys chocolate eggs.  Each child had a certain color foil that was their color, and it was always exciting, even for those in their early teens.

                       
For those of you who would like to begin this Family Tradition, Elves and Angels is now selling beautiful hardwood eggs.  We have both oval eggs, and eggs with a flat bottom, which are perfect for creating painted eggs, as a keepsake.
Some of Suzanne's Eggs from her childhood
     Some of our children still have their childhood Wooden Eggs, and get them out every year at Easter to display in their homes.  Some of our daughters, carry on the “Painted Egg Tradition” with their own children, and now a real Family Tradition has been created.
Maybe generations from now, there will be Great Grandchildren receiving
Painted Wooden eggs to celebrate Easter, and the coming of Spring!

Some of Priscilla's eggs made for her children, and the pink one on the right from her Mama.


Remember, don’t put it off.  A child is a child for only a few years, and the seeds a Mother plants in her child’s heart, can grow and become an oasis, that will nurture them all through their life.  It may give them strength in times of sadness of suffering, or even lead a child home who get lost along the path of life.   It’s just a little thing,... but it’s the Little things, that make life special.



Some Easter Eggs that Suzanne made for her daughters Hannah and Kaylah.



by Susan Smalley 
for Elves and Angels.

40 comments:

  1. I love this! Growing up I looked forward to our Easter eggs every year. It was always so exciting to see what each new year would bring...you were always so good at picking something that fit each of us to the T...you couldn't have gotten more "me" then tipis, bugs and Snowy my goat:-) I love each of them and every year, no matter how old I get, it brings back all the wonderful memories of Easter at home.

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  2. I just like being able to go hiking and walking and be outside again!

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  3. When I was growing up we would always dye eggs together. Our main family spring traditions now are celebrating birthdays. :-) My first was born on the spring equinox and 4 out of 5 kids have spring birthdays.

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  4. As we await spring we offer different types of birdseed and observe all the varieties of birds visit our home. We look up different species and try to determine who's a baby, the mommy, etc. As the kids are very interested in helping feed the birds, seeing what types of seeds they like, which ones are left behind I realized these are great teaching moments so we read lots of books and create activity centers at home around life cycles, regional birds, seasons and the like.

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  5. We celebrate Passover in the spring. The first part is lots of cleaning. I never look forward to it but it always feels good when it's done. Then we have the special Passover meal. We usually invite friends. I've designed our Haggadah (order of service) to reflect our belief in Jesus and to be more interesting for children (and not as long). For a week we don't eat any food with leven, which include oats, beans, barley spelt and rye. We have lots of special treats like matzah lasagna and matzah pizza. As our children get older and more able to participate the holidays get more fun and exciting. Purim is coming up soon and the tradition I started is the kids get new dress-up clothes for Purim, as part of the celebration includes acting out the story of Esther. My daughter is going to love her princess dresses!

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  6. Boston College does a big Easter egg hunt every year, so we do that. I don't mind a bit of candy now and then; I think your comment on "For those who don’t feed their children on candy, and sugar..." is a bit much. I mean if you don't, then great, but it's not as if anyone who ever let their kid have a sweet-tart at Easter has suddenly swapped out three squares for cotton candy, you know?

    I was really proud of the kid last year. He saw one little boy in tears. Worried that the boy was sad about not getting very many eggs (there were a few big kids not exercising much restraint) he ran over an put a big armful of his own eggs into the kid's bag. Way to go, kiddo.

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  7. We do Easter Egg hunts and one must find the Golden Egg! We also celebrate May Day.
    We celebrate Spring Equinox with song, food and crafts to welcome the Sun.

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  8. Our spring tradition buy a new permaculture plant to plant in our yard. Every year we pick something new, and add into our collective.

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  9. We celebrate Easter by hiding cascaroñes, which are colorful eggshells filled with confetti, and then cracking them on each other's head.

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  10. As a kid, we had a bet for who found the first robin. They won a dollar. But, robins don't seem to migrate anymore.

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  11. We celebrate spring by taking lots of hikes :)

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  12. We celebrate Spring by celebrating Pesach- we clean the whole house from top to bottom, then clean our souls with a feast with our families and friends

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  13. Family pictures in the bluebonnet flowers!

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  14. Easter Egg hunts. My husband likes to re-hide the eggs as the kids find them so it lasts for hours. :)

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  15. We love to celebrate Easter and the coming of spring with lots of nature walks, egg decorating and egg hunts. Thank you for the chance to win these gorgeous playstands!

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  16. We always start growing some plants inside on the first day of spring:-)

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  17. We love to celebrate the arrival of each season with a day focused completely on time outdoors - and the first day of Spring seems to be extra sweet. A favorite tradition on this day is to take a walk together on our neighborhood nature trail and observe the signs of the season. Before bed, we read season poems from a favorite collection :)

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  18. I love dyeing Easter eggs with my students. You would be shocked by how many have NEVER dyed eggs. They are so used to plastic eggs. :(

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  19. We love doing spring, flower, butterfly, and very colorful crafts!

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  20. We do egg dying and Easter egg hunts

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  21. A brand new dress, easter egg hunt, and photographs! <3

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  22. My favorite spring tradition is starting the seeds indoors, and I am so excited to do so with my daughter this year... THIS WEEK! Can't wait to get my hands in dirt again!

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  23. We dye eggs with plant dyes, get new dresses, take photos, and enjoy a big family meal with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

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  24. We always use onion peels to dye our eggs brown. We also make Russian Easter Bread called Paska. We spend the day with family and do Easter baskets for the children in the morning. In the afternoon we do an Easter Egg hunt in the yard.

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  25. We start getting our backyard ready for gardening and bbq's...can't wait for the little one to join this year

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  26. Our spring tradition that I'd like to start with our little ones is something we did today - it's starting to thaw here just a little, and so we took a long walk out to the middle of the lake near our house with the dogs and then warmed up by a fire in the firepits at the park. There wasn't anyone else around but us, and it was such a great way to welcome spring.

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  27. We spend time together outdoors and prepare and plant our garden together each spring! <3

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  28. Not a tradition, persay, but I love taking the family out to our local botanical gardens to see the spring blooms!

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  29. We paint Easter eggs but we also take a walk around our neighborhood, looking for signs of Spring. New buds on trees and bird's nests with eggs in them. Flowers and bugs are the biggest hit!!

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  30. We just go outside as much as possible! Walks, hikes, picnics, zoo, and enjoy everything in full bloom!

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  31. My favority spring tradition has yet to be started. My son was born last April and this will be our first Easter with him. I am excited about the Easter baskets and egg hunts, but really love this idea of painted wooden eggs. I think it will be something that we may try!

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  32. we love going to the zoo for my oldest's birthday and doing chalk drawings on the driveway1

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  33. We fly kites all afternoon weather willing. We have all kinds of traditions but that is my favorite part.

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  34. We love doing an egg hunt and eating chocolate malted eggs :)

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  35. One of my favorite spring traditions is a BIG clean out of the house. Purging items we don't need or use anymore, switching out winter linens for spring ones, reorganzing and sometimes reconfiguring our spaces. This year my almost three year old really enjoyed playing in all the clutter (we take everything out of storage spaces then put only what we want back in neatly) and she loved finding toys we had previously put away because she was bored of them. She kept saying "thank-you for my prizes!" even though none of the items were truely new. Fresh starts are my favorite spring tradition!

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  36. readying our garden and planting our seeds. little hands, big hands dirty and productive!

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  37. We make personalized gifts for others in the family :)

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  38. We decorate Easter eggs and go to hunts. We also do our garden as a family.

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  39. Spending more time playing outside again!

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  40. I grew up in a full household (one of five kids) and we always looked forward to the "Easter Bunny's" master egg hunt! Sometimes they were hidden so well, we found them months later. Which is great if they were plastic eggs filled with $$ but not so good if they were hard boiled. :-) Now my brothers and sisters are all grown up (in age anyway) and have children of our own. To this day, we still meet for brunch at my parents house. Now our children do the egg hunting, but we are always waiting excitedly to find the remaining eggs that the kids couldn't find. I feel blessed for my awesome family and that we are all still close enough to keep this tradition going.

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