Hi Ruth,
The Sparkle Egg object lesson went great!
Instead of using dissolving paper I used a white fabric called "H20 Gone Water Soluble Stabilizer" (see attached photo I pulled from fabric site - it's the white fabric in the middle of the picture). I purchased it at my local "Fabricland" store. They carry it on a 14.75" wide roll. You ask a salesperson for it and they will pull out the roll and cut off your desired length. I tested writing on it with a pen at the store and I was able to write on it easily.
I cut the H20 fabric into 1.5" strips first. Then cut these strips into 1.5" small squares. So you end up with 1.5" x 1.5" squares. You could probably go up to 2" squares if you wanted. This worked great for the eggs. The other idea would be to cut longer strips that are narrower, really depends what you are expecting them to write or draw on it.
The kids drew (or wrote) on the squares with markers (or pens). I told them they could simply draw sad faces anytime they did something they regretted and needed to ask God's forgiveness from then til Easter Sunday.
I purchased a "Glass Bubble Bowl" from Walmart ($16.97 CDN), it was in with the vases and fake flowers. The bowl was 26 cm (10") high and 23 cm (9") in diameter and we found it worked really well, nice size mouth to drop their paper into, and they could see what happens easily thru the glass.
IMPORTANT - use WARM water. We had the warm water in a pitcher. We poured the warm water into the bowl after everyone had dropped in their paper. We tested it first and it will dissolve in cold water slowly, but it dissolved almost instantly with the warm water, so use warm water!
The water will turn a bit murky, but you will have neat wisps of colours (dyes from the markers) floating through the water, giving it a bit of a rainbow effect - very cool.
Luanne