A Walk Through Jerusalem

Our stake put on a "Walk through Jerusalem" on Saturday. They set up a village in the gym, elaborately partitioned off with sheets and cardboard to create a number of private spaces where the children could travel through in small groups to learn about the Saviour's life. 

They learned about his birth, his childhood, heard testimony from The Woman at the Well, visited the Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane, sat inside the tomb, and even had a special visit with a Nephite. 

Along the way they had some snacks (pita and hummus, grapes, and olives), made some crafts (a tomb craft and a palm leaf), and got to hold a crown of thorns and some big nails (among other things).

Here they are weirdly "buying" a dreidel (they were given some coins with which to purchase things at the market by the well—a little dreidel set and their snacks (the water from the well was "free" but so was everything else since the money they used was just plastic gold coins)):

This activity was planned and executed very well...I say...before offering my little nugget of constructive criticism: why dreidels? 

I mean, Easter typically coincides with Passover, right? Not Hanukah.

This market stall already was giving out food (the pita, hummus, etc.), so perhaps the other thing to purchase could be related to Passover somehow. I'm not saying that we should try to host our own Seder dinner...I'm just saying that we could do something besides give the children a Hanukah toy...

I don't really have excellent ideas to replace this. I've thought of, perhaps, a calligraphy station, where the kids could write their name in Hebrew (or simply a word, like shalom or l'chaim or whatever, that way the station leader doesn't have to manage figuring out how to write a dozen different names for every group). Or, like, if they're just looking to give away a little prize...little plastic frogs (either hopping ones or flying ones) or some plastic insects or something (for locusts) or...little plastic fireballs (kidding on this last one; I don't know that they make these).

Anyway, it was all lovely...just the Hanukah thing was weird...even though they also had Christmas stuff out (frankincense, gold, and myrrh, for example). At least the Christmas stuff made sense because the first station was talking about the Saviour's birth and had a big nativity scene up and everything. 

All in all, a wonderful activity. Phoebe got a little squirrelly at the end, so Andrew took her out, but technically she wasn't invited (only children 3–11 were, but all the older kids were going through the same set up later in the afternoon, so we figured Phoebe could just tag along in the morning with the little kids since our entire day was devoted to taking kids to and from the stake center anyway). 

Here are the three little ones all dressed up in their...Egyptian...clothes:

We don't really have any typical "biblical" wear at our house, but we do have thobes and kaftans.