I love to teach my kids the stories from the Bible in fun and hands on ways, especially during Holy Week! Holy Week leads up to the most important day for Christians, which is Easter! It begins with Palm Sunday, and I like to make sure this is a special and memorable day at our house. We made these Palm Sunday crafts with handprint palms, and footprint donkeys. So much fun! You can find all of my Palm Sunday resources for families here. Let me show you this fun Palm Sunday craft for kids.
Updated to say: This became a small part of a much larger resource I made… Holy Week In Handprints! I hope you can enjoy the entire project! {{hugs!}}
Donkey Footprint Craft For Palm Sunday
Supplies Needed For Palm Sunday Donkey Craft:
- Paint (preferably washable tempera paint for working with kids)
- Paper (we cut the white poster board into quarters)
I love handprint and footprint crafts! I like to put the paint out on a paper plate to let the kids stamp their hands in.
You can also just paint right onto their hands with a paintbrush if you find that’s easier. First, stamp a gray footprint in the middle of your paper.
A wider footprint makes for a cuter donkey head, so you might want to push the paper onto your foot to stamp some of your arch on there.
Wash off your feet. My mom was washing the kid’s feet, and I told her it was a little bonus “Holy Thursday activity”. 😉
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I had the kids fingerpaint the donkey’s features on. I would give older kids brushes and let them do more detailed work.
Paint the donkey’s eyes, nose, hair, and ears. We used red paint to add the word “Hosanna” because red is the liturgical color for Palm Sunday. Then, stamp green handprints all along the bottom for the “Palms”. 🙂
Tips for Painting a Cute Donkey:
- First of all, I found that the footprint donkeys are cuter as profiles than straight on. This means you can see just one eye.
- Donkeys’ noses are white at the end, not black.
- Donkeys have big ears, more like bunnies than horses.
To paint a cute profile donkey, follow these steps:
- When making your gray footprint, be sure to push the paper onto your foot arch so his face will be wide enough.
- Get some white paint, and paint a big circle of his nose white.
- Paint a football shape white for his eye. Only paint 1 eye.
- With your black paint, add one dot for a nostril, and one line for the mouth from the bottom of his nose.
- Also with the black, outline your white football shape and paint a black dot for his eye. More advanced painters can add one white dot in the middle of the black part of his eye for a little glean.
- With gray paint, add long bunny-type ears.
- With black paint add his hair down his head and back around the toes, and a tuft between his ears.
- When you’re finished with your donkey, add handprint palms across the bottom and a red Hosanna across the top. You’re finished!
If you’re painting the donkey straight on rather than a profile, he might look more like this:
Even Julian (age 3) and Violet (age 1) had fun with this one. 😉
The Symbolic Holy Week & Easter Cookbook is sure to bless your family in the upcoming seasons! Read more now.
My 11 year old just saw the craft and said “COOL!”. She does a craft time each day with 3 of her younger sisters and this one she is super excited for…I think I’ll be standing by to help with clean-up! Also, thanks for the heads-up on the movie deal. I needed one more thing for the kids’ Easter basket…this will complete it perfectly! 🙂
That is so cute that she does craft time with your other kids! Where is my 11 year old?!
Give it time, my dear! Before you know it, you’ll have an 11 year old…it really does go by in the blink of an eye!
I my gosh, I’m so going to do this with my kids!! I still have a handprint washcloth that my now 13 year old made when he was 3 and it’s one my mommy treasures.
I was looking for just the right craft for Palm Sunday and this was perfect. 🙂
We just completed this craft and had so much fun!
Thank you,
Michelle
So glad to hear this! 🙂
This is a great craft! Just in time for this Sunday:) Just posted on Craft Gossip!
Thanks!
http://lessonplans.craftgossip.com/?p=5813
Thanks so much for featuring this project! Glad you found it! 🙂
OK Lacy – you strike again. I was all ready to do the Holy Thursday project from last year for my co-op class, but WAS NOT looking forward to all the cutting I was going to have to do! There are 10 kids in the class & it’s K/1 class, more kids K than grade 1. I had my 20 egg cartons I’d collected from the other moms & then this pops up! So I did a practice one at home tonight & I’m trying to figure out the timing to get this done w/10 kids. We’re also doing a cool “By His stripes we are healed” cross that I got off your link up – you run a marble that’s been doused in red paint over a cardstock cross & it looks kind of bloody. So between all the paint projects I should have time for everything to dry so they can take them home w/o making a mess. I should call my class “Catholic Icing” instead of “Holidays & Holy Days”. Thanks for everything!
So glad to hear you’re finding my projects useful! I’ve been planning this Palm Sunday craft for a few years now and I’m glad we actually had the time to do it this year. 🙂
Hey, I am a Baptist – Christian 1st – and I found several ideas that I can use with my Sunday School and/or Children’s Church. Thanks for the great ideas!!! God bless you!
That’s fantastic! My dad is Baptist. 🙂
Great; thank you.
I did this craft yesterday with my girls group at church. Even the 15 and 17 year old enjoyed it. We had a few extra white t-shirts, so the younger girls (age 8-10) did it on the back of t-shirts and wore them to church today (Palm Sunda)! It was just fun for them to spend time together out in the sunshine. Nothing complicated to do!
That sounds so cool! What a great idea to put it on shirts. 🙂