Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. We hope you've had a great week and that you are enjoying being back at school.
Today is a day for celebration! It is Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of a special time on the church called Holy Week, which is the week before Easter Sunday.
Here's the story of what happened on Palm Sunday.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in the crowds in Jerusalem when Jesus rode past on a donkey?
There was cheering and waving of branches (just like when we wave flags at sports matches or when the Queen arrives for a visit). People were excited as they realised that Jesus was the one that they had been waiting for for hundreds of years. They knew what was written in the Old Testament and they could see it happening right before their eyes!
Towards the end of the video, we can see that the religious leaders were very uncomfortable with what the people were saying about Jesus. This was the start of what eventually led to the events of Good Friday.
We can celebrate with our own palm branches today - but we are going to make them out of newspaper!
Here are some simple instructions to make your palm branches (newspaper trees)
This video also shows you how to make newspaper trees. Look how tall they made one!
Prayer
Today we are celebrating that Jesus is our Saviour, the one who was promised in the Old Testament, but we are also looking ahead across the week. Holy Week is full of drama and it eventually leads to Good Friday but then also Easter Sunday.
Take a moment today to share with your family what Easter means to you. What does the word Easter make you think of? Are there things you remember about Easter celebrations past, things you did, things you ate or maybe a part of the Easter story itself that sticks with you?
We can pray a prayer of thanks with our family today. We can thank God for sending Jesus.
We've got a great Palm Sunday song to share together today that tells us the story. We hope you have fun dancing around to this one. Maybe you can wave your newspaper branches as you dance.
Thank you for joining us today. We are looking forward to our Easter Sunday celebrations next week with a visit from No Strings Attached and a new play from the children at Christchurch as we join in with the rest of the church at www.christchurch-clevedon.org.uk
Hello and welcome to Christchurch Kids. It's the week after Easter and we've got a story of what happened to two people walking down a road just after that incredible Sunday.
The people in this story had seen Jesus do amazing things and spent time with him but even they didn't understand what had happened. Jesus explained the Scriptures - that we now call the Old Testament - and all the writings that pointed to Jesus and how he would die and come back to life as part of God's plan. They still didn't realise who they were talking to until they sat down and started to eat with him.
This story tells us about an amazing meeting with Jesus after he had risen from the dead but it also tells us something about us. The Bible can be difficult to understand sometimes and that's OK. If we ask God to help us when we read the Bible or talk about it with our families or friends, we can learn more about what God is saying to us.
In the Bible, Deuteronomy 4:29 says "Seek the Lord your God with your whole heart and He will be found". If we truly want to hear what God is saying to us, we will find Him. Our colouring sheet today is this verse. You can download it here
Going on a journey
Just like the two people in the story, we can go on a journey today too. You could make your own map. What would be on your map?
A road for toy cars to drive along?
Lego houses for people to live in?
Train tracks?
An ocean?
You could draw your map or you could make it using coloured fabrics. Can you find a bluish sheet for the sea? A yellow t-shirt for a beach? A green jumper for a field?
You could go on a different journey by making an obstacle course. You can set yourself different challenges as you move around the space.
Go under something
Go around something a few times
Throw something into a target (e.g. a small soft toy into a saucepan)
Balance something on your head
Hop from one place to another
You could make up a points system or time yourself.
Prayer
We are going on a journey in our prayers today too with a labyrinth. What is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth? A maze has dead ends but a labyrinth has one single path. Labyrinths have been around for over 4,000 years and can be seen all over the world. Some are huge and take hours to walk around. They can be made from tiles, stone walls, flowers, hedges or patterns on the ground.
We are going to use a finger labyrinth. You can download this one to use or you could draw your own.
Using a finger labyrinth to help us pray will help us to be still and focus on one thing. We can think about being thankful or asking God about something or saying sorry. Use the hand you don't normally write with and slowly trace your finger around the path of the labyrinth as you pray.
We are going to finish with a song and it's a celebration about Jesus. When the two people in our story realised who they had been talking to, they were so excited about Jesus that they had to run back to Jerusalem to tell their friends. We can be excited about how amazing Jesus is too.
We'd love to see any of your maps, obstacle courses or prayers. You can send us your pictures using the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you have a great week and you can join us for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday!
Welcome to Wiggle Wednesday. I thought we would carry on the celebrations from Easter Sunday with one of our favourite songs from church. Easter shows us that Jesus is totally amazing. Some might say he's great, great and brill, brill!
I always get the actions wrong on this one so I have found some fantastic people to help us. They don't always get the actions right either! You could try this in fancy dress too just like the people in the video.
Welcome to Christchurch Kids and Happy Easter! Easter Sunday is the best day. It is the biggest party you can imagine! All around the world today, people are celebrating that Jesus came back to life. He made the way possible for us to be reunited with God. Oh Happy Day!
To celebrate Easter, it is quite traditional to make an Easter garden. It usually represents the garden with the empty tomb and the stone rolled away and it sometimes has the empty cross too.
You could have a go at making your own Easter garden. You can see there are lots of different ideas about making an empty tomb - even using a pineapple ring.
Here's one of the yummier ideas for making an Easter Garden with a Jammy Dodger tomb and a mini-egg stone.
This can help us think about the time when Jesus was inside the tomb and his friends were sad. We can pray for those who are feeling sad or feeling lonely.
Break the egg open and see that it is empty.
Something amazing happened! Jesus rose from the dead and wasn't in the tomb anymore. God can give us a new start if we say we're sorry for things we have done wrong. We can thank God for His forgiveness and ask Him to help people who are worried or scared to have the hope of a new start too.
Eat the chocolate!
Jesus came back to life so that we can be part of God's amazing story. God loves us and wants good things for us. Taste how sweet the chocolate is and talk about all the people we love and why we love them. We can thank God for those people and we can ask God to give them good things too.
We can finish our Easter celebration with a song. Happy Day is a great song to dance to as well as sing.
We hope you have a wonderful Easter Sunday. We would love to see pictures of your Easter gardens or crosses hanging in your windows. See the right hand column for how to send your pictures to us to share.
It's Good Friday today. Every year, in our house the question is asked, "Why is it called Good Friday when it was such a sad day?" The video below tells the story of Good Friday but it doesn't end there. The storytellers who made the animation couldn't end it at the end of Friday as they knew it wasn't the end of the story.
Why did Jesus have to die? Why do we call it Good Friday? It is because it is good news and the video below explains it brilliantly.
Over the past couple of weeks, lots of us have been making rainbows and putting them in our window. It has been fantastic to see these little bits of joy appearing around the streets. Today, we invite you to make a cross and hang it up in your window. Here are some ideas of materials you could use to make a cross.
You may have been painting rocks and leaving them for people to find on their walks. Wouldn't this be a wonderful rock to find.
Prayer Activity
Just before Good Friday, Jesus had a meal with his disciples and he washed their feet. In the Old Testament foot washing was a ritual that happened in the temple for the priests. When Jesus washed his disciples' feet, he was preparing them to become the leaders of his new church when he had gone. It also shows us how Jesus came to help people. He was God's son but he didn't see himself as too important to sit down and wash his friends' smelly feet.
Why don't you wash the feet of someone in your family today? You would only need a little bit of water and a towel. It might be a bit funny as feet can be very tickly. You can think about other ways you can help people too.
We have a song from Rend Co Kids today called "The Story of the Cross". Take a moment to sit and have a listen to the words and maybe sing along.
We hope you all have a peaceful Good Friday and we will be back in two days for Easter Sunday.
Hello and welcome to Palm Sunday. This is the start of an extra special week for the church community and it starts with a party! Have you ever seen the opening ceremony of the Olympics? All the athletes parade into the arena and they are holding the flags from their countries. All the people there to watch the Games wave their flags excitedly as they know something special is about to happen.
On Palm Sunday, the people in Jerusalem were excited too. They were excited to see Jesus and they didn't have any flags so they grabbed big palm branches and waved them and cheered as Jesus rode into the city on a donkey. You can watch the story of Palm Sunday below.
In our Xstream Sunday group, we have been looking
at the book of Luke and we have been investigators. We have been connecting the
Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, or God's Chosen One, with the
stories of Jesus. Palm Sunday is another of those clues to Jesus' identity as
it was written in Zechariah 9:9:
Rejoice, people of Jerusalem.
Shout
for joy, people of Jerusalem.
Your king is coming to you.
He does
what is right, and he saves.
He is
gentle and riding on a donkey.
He is
on the colt of a donkey.
This was written 520 years before Palm Sunday.
The people in Jerusalem were so excited because that was how long they had been
waiting for their Messiah to ride in on a donkey.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. We can make our own donkeys to help us celebrate the day. Here's our donkey puppet.
You can follow the instructions to make the basic puppet in this video- but we are going to change it from a crocodile into a donkey. You can download the donkey extras here or you can design your own.
We have a Palm Sunday colouring sheet for you to download here.
And you can download this Chat Mat all about Palm Sunday too here. This is great to read, colour, and chat about with your family.
Prayer
Palm Sunday was a very joyful day. Let's take a moment to say Thank You to God for things that bring us joy. We can celebrate with the people of Jerusalem that Jesus came to show us how much God loves us.
We can sing to celebrate God's love too. This song is great fun to sing along with and there are some actions too.
BIG (Stretch our arms out to the sides)
GREAT (one "thumbs up" out in front of you)
FAB (the other "thumbs up" out in front of you)
STRONG (strong man arms out to each side)
Towards the end of the song, the actions get faster and faster, can you keep up?
We have a special week ahead of us leading up to Easter Sunday next week. Check back here for Wiggle Wednesday and Good Friday.
We'd love to see your Palm Sunday donkeys if you'd like to send us a picture. You can send them in following the instructions in the right hand column. We'd love to hear from you.
