The kings have made it to the end of their journey. They have found Jesus in the stable. We hope you enjoyed following them around our town.
We hope you are having a wonderful day celebrating the birth of Jesus.
We got a little mystery to solve today. A cheese-eating, mystery-solving mouse has a new noisy neighbour and he's got to work out who he is?
Let's celebrate together with this fun Christmas song.
You can sing along and join in with the actions.
Thank you popping in on Christmas Day!
Join us on Sunday for a Veggie Tales Christmas movie and then on the 3rd of January we will be celebrating F@CT together online. We hope you can join us.
Hello and welcome to Christchurch Kids on the 4th Sunday in Advent.
Christmas is nearly here!
The Three Kings Advent-ure
First of all. Let's check in to see where the 3 kings are today. They are definitely on their travels.
Click on the video below to find out where they are.
There's only a few more days to Christmas now. Check back here each day to see where the three kings go on the last part of their journey.
This is the Sunday where we would normally be in church for our fantastic, joyful, chaotic, unrehearsed Nativity play. It is always so much fun as we share the Christmas story with all of our church family.
This year we have done things differently. Some of us have acted and some have narrated and we have brought it all together to make our very own ...
Online Nativity
Well done and thank you to everyone who has sent in a clip for our Nativity. You have acted amazingly and narrated beautifully. Thanks to mums and dads too who worked out technologies to send everything in.
We hope you enjoy watching it.
Our Nativity play is usually followed by our Christmas party. We hope you have time today for some fun and games. What's your favourite board game to play?
Let's carry on with our celebrations with this joyful Christmas song.
Can you do the J-O-Y actions?
We hope you are able to join us on Christmas Eve for our online Christingle service. If you haven't booked your Christingle pack yet, please click here.
Hello and welcome to Christchurch Kids. We are looking forward to Christmas now. Have you got decorations up yet?
The Three Kings Advent-ure
We've been following the three kings all week and today they have made it to the sea. It looks very blue today. I wonder if the kings will stop for a quick swim?
Where does the Christmas Story start? There are four books of the Bible that tell us about Jesus' life. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and they are called the Gospels. Then word 'Gospel' means 'good news'.
Matthew starts the story of Jesus with his family tree which goes all the way back to Abraham.
John starts the story at the very beginning of creation.
Mark starts the story when Jesus had already grown up and it starts with Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism.
The Christmas story that we are most familiar with comes from Luke and he starts the story with a visit from an angel. It isn't the angel who came to see Mary, but the angel who came to visit Zechariah to say that his wife Elizabeth would have a baby.
Elizabeth was Mary's cousin and her baby grew up to be John the Baptist.
This is a really great retelling of the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, complete with an unusual looking angel and a tiny bike!
Game
Our story above actually misses a little bit from the end of the story.
When John was born everyone thought that he should be called Zechariah after his father, as that was the custom. Zechariah wrote down that the baby's name would be John, just as the angel had told him. When he had done this he was suddenly able to talk again.
Our game today is ... who can be the quietest the longest?
This is also a good game to play in the car.
Another variation of this game is deciding a word that no-one is allowed to say and the last person to say it wins. Sometimes this game can last for hours in our house as everyone tries to avoid saying "banana"!
Prayer
This week is the third week of Advent and in church we will be lighting the third candle in the Advent wreath. This candle is the Joy candle.
Let's take a moment to be quiet and talk to God.
We can thank him for the joy that comes with Jesus' birth at Christmas, the joy that God loved us so much that he sent his Son.
We can ask God to help us remember that joy at times when we are finding things difficult or sad.
We've got a joyful song today with some fun actions to get us celebrating together for Christmas. We hope you enjoy getting moving to this one.
Keep checking back here this week as we carry on with our online advent calendar. Where will the kings go on their journey around the town?
We are going to be having our Christmas Eve Christingle service online and we have a pack to make your own Christingle for every family who books one. We hope you can join us for songs, puppets, magic and lots of fun as we celebrate Christmas together.
Hello and welcome to December F@CT. We are getting really excited about Christmas now. Are you?
The Three Kings Advent-ure
This week we've started following the three kings for our very own online Advent Calendar as they make their way to find Jesus. Have you seen where they've already been?
Today they are going to catch the bus!
Come back each day and find out where they've travelled to.
Oh look! That's a big present. Do you think I should open it now or wait for Christmas?
It doesn't look like I'm very good at waiting for Christmas. What would Christmas look like if we didn't wait? Do you think it might look a bit like this?
Do you have an Advent calendar? Advent is a special time of year and it's all about waiting for a special arrival.
People were waiting for Jesus for hundreds of years - imagine how big their Advent calendars would have been!
Prophets in the Old Testament told everyone that Jesus was coming. 700 years before Jesus was born, Micah said the Messiah (or God's chosen one) would be born in Bethlehem and Isaiah said he would be from the family of King David.
Jesus is called "The Light of the World" and before he came we were in darkness.
Isaiah was talking about the coming of Jesus when he said
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light.
They lived in a land of shadows,
but now light is shining on them.
Isaiah 9 : 2
Advent is a time of waiting for that light but for us we know who is coming on Christmas Day.
Have you played Hide and Seek recently? Maybe our waiting in Advent is like the time when you are hiding in a dark place waiting to be found. Do you stay still and quiet? You know it's going to be funny when the light shines on you because you've been found. In our house, when someone is found after hiding for a long time, there is laughing and chatting.
We are waiting in the dark in Advent, waiting for the light of Christmas Day. When that light shines we are so happy that Jesus has come!
Activity
Maybe you could have a game of Hide and Seek today. When you are waiting in a dark place you can remember what we have been talking about today.
Have fun!
We've got a fantastic Chat Mat for you to colour and chat about with your family.
Let's take a moment to be still and quiet. We can thank God that He sent Jesus to be the Light of the world.
You can use your own words or you can use these words to help you.
Dear God,
Thank you for the light you created.
Thank you that you saw your beautiful world needed another kind of light.
Thank you that you sent Jesus to be that light to the world.
Please help us to be lights to those around us.
Amen
We've got a Christmas song to listen to and join in with today. Let's listen together as we praise God for that glorious night.
We hope you've had fun celebrating Advent with us today. Pop back every day and you can see where the Three Kings have been on their travels.
We would normally be getting ready for our Christmas Eve Christingle service and the good news is that we are getting ready but this year all the fun of the service will be online. We are packing up Christingle kits so that every household can join in and make one together during the online service on Christmas Eve.
Hello Story Keepers and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. Today is the first Sunday in Advent. It's a really special time at church when we got ready for Jesus coming at Christmas. It looks like the Story Keepers are getting ready for Christmas too. Let's watch today's episode together.
It's great that we can be Story Keepers too. By watching the video and learning the stories from the Bible we can share them with others and pass them on. Today, maybe it's enough to watch this video. If you would like to find out a bit more, keep reading...
Our BIG question today is...
how well do you know the Christmas story?
We've been on quite a journey with the Story Keepers over the past couple of months. In 64 A.D., sharing stories was the best way to share the good news of Jesus. They didn't have the stories of Jesus written down in Bibles that they could keep in their homes and pass to others.
The Bible is full of fantastic stories about people who did amazing things with God's help. Which story is your favourite? Daniel in the Lion's Den? David and Goliath? Jonah and the whale? Maybe the Christmas Story is your favourite?
The very best thing about Bible stories is not just that they are inspiring or exciting to read but that they are a way for God to speak to us today.
Did you hear anything today in the The Story Keepers episode that surprised you? Did you know that some people think the Wise Men could have arrived two years after Jesus was born?
Sometimes, if we think we know a story well, we might stop listening when it is retold. This Christmas, listen carefully to the stories and songs. God wants to talk to you.
Prayer
In the episode today we heard that Mary, Joseph and Jesus had to leave their home to escape the danger from Herod's soldiers. They had to leave their friends and family and escape to Egypt. They became refugees.
A refugee is someone who has been forced to leave their home. It might be because of war or natural disasters. It might be because of persecution, which is when some is mistreated or punished for what they believe or who they are. You may see stories of refugees on the news today.
We know God cares as it says in Deuteronomy 10
The Lord your God is God of all gods. He is the Lord of all lords. He is the great God. He is strong and wonderful. He does not take sides. He helps orphans and widows. He loves foreigners. He gives them food and clothes.
We can pray for refugees and for the charities that help them. This video can help us with our prayers today.
We've got a great song today which features some of those brilliant Bible stories we talked about earlier. Let's praise God together with singing and dancing.
We hope you have enjoyed following the adventures of the Story Keepers as this was our last episode with them.
Join us this week on the blog as we start our very own online Advent Calendar! From the 1st of December we are going to be following the Three Kings as they find their way around Clevedon.
Pop back here each day to see what they've been up to.
Next week we are starting to get really excited about Christmas with F@CT online and F@CT in church. If you would like to book your place for F@CT in church, please click here.
