REVIEW: Glow in the Dark Egglo Eggs and The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Book by Egglo Entertainment

We had a chance to try out the super cool Glow in the Dark Egglo Eggs and The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Book by Egglo Entertainment.

In addition, we got to use The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Audio-Book, Egglo Treasures Scripture Scrolls, and The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Program Guide.

 

WHAT IS IT?:

Egglo Entertainment offers a wonderful selection of products to help you make your Easter celebration meaningful in your family or church youth group. 

The foundation of the program is based on the use of the unique Glow in the Dark Egglo Eggs ($11.99).  Your little adventurers will love the new twist to their Easter Egg Hunt by searching for the pink, blue, and green glowing eggs in the dark.

The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Book ($12.99) will provide children with a fictional story about three kids who find that the glowing eggs filled with scripture scrolls lead them to a treasure box in the attic, and there, they realize that they’ve been following “the light” all along, and that the real treasure is the light of Jesus in a world of darkness.  This story is also available in a downloadable The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Audio-Book ($2.99) that’s approximately 30 minutes long.

The sturdy Egglo Treasure Scripture Scrolls ($4.29) are a nice touch when combined with the glowing plastic eggs.  They fit neatly inside, and kids get the fun of unrolling them to read key scriptures that convey the messages of Jesus as the light of our lives.

All of these items are tied together in The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure Program Guide ($14.99), which gives you tips on preparing an all-out celebration for your group.  It gives you ideas on decorating, preparations, snacks, how to introduce the theme to your children, activities to relay the message, and how to conduct the glow-in-the-dark egg hunt effectively.

This product line is adaptable for any age, but it’s targeted for ages 4-13.

 

OUR EXPERIENCE:

First off, I want to say that while we are a Christian family, we do not celebrate any man-made holidays as religious holidays.  This means that for us, both Christmas and Easter are merely secular events.  With that said, we set out to use these products from Egglo Entertainment not as Easter lessons, but simply as bible study lessons.  I wanted to clarify that, because I think it speaks to the versatility of the product line in serving Christians with slightly different beliefs.

Before we began our study, I perused the program guide to get an idea for how the presentation should flow and to pick and choose the ideas and activities I wanted to do with my kids.  Once I had a game plan for how I wanted things to proceed, I gathered the kids together.

First, I read aloud Matthew’s account of Jesus’ arrest, death, and resurrection from a Common English bible translation, as suggested in the program guide.  This was a great way to start the kids to thinking about the theme of our study.  Then we went over the “Bible Alive” discussion questions in the program guide that helped them recall key points from the scripture reading.

Next, I adapted the program guide’s “Light and Dark” activity to suit our two-student circumstances.  Instead of using an appliance box, I just had the kids go into a dark closet and close the door.  Then I asked them the suggested questions that led them to realize how little they could see in the darkness.  Then rather than handing them a flashlight and using a printed copy of the poster, I instead opened the closet door and passed them my backlit laptop computer displaying the poster on the screen and shut the door again.  Then I asked them if they could now see the poster and read it out loud, using the light of the computer.  Of course, they could, and the poster stated that Jesus is the light of the world.  Then we discussed how everyone in the world lives in darkness until they come to know the light of Jesus, and that in turn, they spread that light to others.

Then it was time to present the story.  My kids don’t tend to share my reading aloud from one book to them very well (my 9- and 6-year olds like to bicker over who can see better and such), I opted to have them listen to the audio-book of The Egg-cellent Easter Adventure from my computer so they could sit farther apart from each other.  This worked well.  Although they aren’t usually fans of audio-books, this 30-minute story held their attention better than I expected.  Afterwards, we went over the discussion and comprehension questions from the program guide together, and I was surprised to find they did quite well with their recall of events in the story.

Then I sat the kids at the bar for an adaptation of the activity called “Scripture Scramble” in the program guide.  The guide suggested writing the words to John 1:5 on balloons, putting only one word on each balloon.  Participants would them try to put the balloons in the right order.  Since I just had the two kids participating at home, I wrote the individual words on cut up index cards and scrambled them up on the bar.  They sat together and worked to unscramble the words to correctly quote the scripture.  Haylee enjoyed this activity a lot, as evidenced by her big smile when she figured it out!  My kids, like most, have always enjoyed hands-on activities like this, so she was a willing participant in this one, for sure.

Our final activity before the big event was to do one of the snack breaks suggested in the program guide called the “Light of the World” snack.  For this snack, I laid out a plate of pretzel rods, a plate of large marshmallows, a bowl of Cool Whip, and a bowl with a tub of yellow or red sprinkles as you can see here.

Then the kids assembled “torches” to represent the light of Jesus by inserting a pretzel rod in a marshmallow, rolling the marshmallow ends in Cool Whip, and then putting either all yellow or all red sprinkles over it to represent the “flame.”  Hayden, my teenager who attends a public charter high school, was home from school by this time, so we filled him in on our activities and invited him to join in.  Making these was a big hit, as you can see the kids displaying their torches and their best smiles.

Then we started preparing dinner and going through our evening routine while we waited for the eggs to “charge” under the living room lights for a while.  I also printed out some of the coloring pages from the program guide to keep Haylee busy, since she loves to color.  Since we planned to do our glow-in-the-dark hunt outside in the front yard at night, I decided not to put the beautiful and sturdy set of Egglo Treasure Scripture Scrolls inside of the eggs, as I was afraid that some of them might get lost outside.  I will save those for an indoor hunt on another occasion.  Instead, I opted to stuff them with the printable scripture scrolls that are included in the downloadable program guide.  I placed two scripture scrolls inside each of the twelve eggs.  Before I went out to hide the eggs, I used the printable Discussion Cards from the program guide to have some conversation with the kids, just leaving out the parts that specifically referenced the Easter holiday so as to make it appropriate for my family.

At last, it was time for the big event we’d all been waiting for…the culmination of our lesson in Jesus being the light of the world who would guide us through the darkness.  I went out to the front yard and spread the eggs out.  I tried my best to take no-flash photos that would show the eggs actually glowing, but you just couldn’t see it well enough!  So I switched to using the flash so you could at least see the kids collecting the eggs into their baskets.  They had so much fun!  (We found the eggs glowed the most after sitting under the florescent light above our breakfast bar, so

keep that in mind if you use these eggs.)  Once they were done, they came back inside to open their eggs and read their scriptures aloud to each other.  It was a really memorable family moment, I must say.  I liked ending the whole afternoon of activities with the reading of the scripture scrolls.  It really helped reinforce the key concept of the lesson and left us all to our own inward thoughts on the message.

This whole topic was so timely for my family, as this very idea came up in our bible study at church just this Sunday.  We were talking about the story of the laborers who were hired at different times of day and yet were paid the same wages at the day’s end, and many were disgruntled at the perceived injustice of it.  That led us to make the correlation in our discussion of those that enter a saved relationship with God early in their lives vs. at the end.  But I said in that case, I wouldn’t feel bitterness, because I would rejoice that others had been saved at all, regardless of when it happened.  I would want as many people as possible to enter the gates of heaven and reap an eternal reward.  But I commented that I would much rather enter that relationship early in life, because who would want to live in the darkness of this world with all of its tragedies and difficult experiences without the light of Jesus to see us through it?  I can’t imagine how much harder life would be without His loving presence.  I’d much rather live with the fruits of the Spirit with love, joy, and peace.  Amen!

All in all, I thought this program had a lot to offer in leading my family into a fruitful discussion about what it means to have Jesus lead you through a dark and dreary world.  It helped me convey the message of hope we can all attain through Christ Jesus.

Egglo Entertainment offers a number of optional products you can use in conjunction with the program guide, including those mentioned here as well as items like stickers you can use to decorate the eggs, scripture scroll stickers to use inside of them, character stickers to use as prizes inside the eggs, and the story presented on DVD (which I think my kids would have really enjoyed).  So there are lots of options available for your family or group.  The items can be purchased individually, or you can purchase a complete kit.  I would definitely recommend that you add this to your family’s bible study!

I also wanted to mention that while I’ve quoted the regular retail prices for the items we used, I did notice that many Egglo items are currently on sale at reduced prices (listed here), so if you think you want to give this product line a try, now might be the best time to place your order!

To see what other Crew members had to say about these versatile products from Egglo Entertainment, click the banner below.