With Advent right around the corner I decided to recommend an intergenerational family Advent festival as a great church wide activity. The idea behind the one I am planning for the first Sunday of Advent is to provide a craft shop for children to make homemade Christmas presents for their families. The also will be treated to a Christmas themed story, cookie decorating, a box lid to place finished (but not yet dry - paint and glue have a tendency to make a mess when they aren't yet dry), and new this year - a tree to place finished wood ornament. We will be taking the tree the following Sunday to a nursing home as a way to celebrate St. Nicholas.
I remember going to Advent festivals growing up and all of my memories are great. You can't go wrong with crafts, sugar, and spending time with friends. It gets everybody in the Christmas spirit and allows for everyone in the church to experience the joy of Christmas through a child's eyes.
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I'm with you in all you just said about your plans for the Children for Christmas. I'm the Children's Min.-Dir. at my local church for about 8 years now. You can't loose making ornaments to go on their tree and presents for mom and dad. Of corse the goodies are a must. I've been trying to locate people that work with Children at Church. I'm trying to find a idea for a Christmas Play, Drama, or Musical. I have run out of ideas. I would like to approach the play this year different that the "norm" Jesus's Birth with Mary and the stable etc. Not that I want to bring out the real meaning of Christmas but different than the Normal Story. If you have any ideas that you have done in the past could you please email me? I would greatly appreciate any efforts you make.
ReplyDeleteI would like to share one thing I did one year with the children concerning their parents presents. I started this 3 months before Christmas. I had the children on a Bible Buck system. They could earn their bucks or loose a couple for any bad behavior. I don't think that was a problem. They would get bucks for attendance, learning a memory verse... They looked at those bucks as real money. In a way it was because at the 2 week in Dec. I added everyones Bible Bucks up and set up a store that they got to shop for their parents a present. Now I did have all the members of the church donating new presents well in advance. This went very well, the Children loved it.Now they still made a homemade card with their gift.
I hope to here back from you.
johigg1964@aol.com
Hi JoAnn!
ReplyDeleteThere are three resources that I think are very good for Christmas
shows. Two books have shows for smaller groups and one is a full out
musical. The Night the Angels Sang is a good book for a small cast
that has a few older kids that can learn a few lines and for a group
that likes to sing. Christmas Programs for Children by Elaina Meyers
has some good shows for smaller groups and some poems about Christmas
that could be read with some songs between them. The First Leon is a
bigger musical production about a boy named Leon learning about the
first Noel. He auditions for all of the parts in the Christmas show
and didn't get cast for any of them, but through that process he
learns about the true meaning of Christmas.
I hope these are helpful! None of them were too expensive to buy and
they are all reproducible. I bought all three at Cokesbury Book Store
(www.cokesbury.com) and they said if I needed to buy them and go
through each one and return the two I didn't need that as long as I
had a receipt that was fine.
I hope you are having a great week!
Peace and Blessings,
Brittany Sky Stanley