Messy Easter and a Palm Sunday giggle. Also a picture for Pondhopper!
Starting last thing first, pondhopper posted some pictures taken about two weeks ago in Norfolk (if I remember rightly), one of which was a magnolia in full bloom.
To prove how slowly spring moves north, I took this picture three days ago at our local hospital when I was visiting Mum. As you can see there are a few open blooms, but it is mainly just in bud.
Messy Easter - it was a bright sunny day yesterday, with little wind and so, although it was only about 14C, it was a day for doing outdoor things. So we did worry that there would be no children at Messy Church but there were - 14 of them, with associated adults, which wasn't too bad. The NYM brought the children - D-d was at the wedding of a work colleague. We made 'palm palms' like these but I didn't take a picture of ours! And there were Easter baskets, and chocolate crispie cake nests - and we made donkeys! I do have a picture of them -
Card body shape and wooden clothes pegs for feet!
But the biggest hit was actually to follow a trail of paper palm leaves through the building and the garden, like a treasure hunt. Each leaf had a number, and then there were simple questions to answer to prove you had found them - 'what colour is number 5?' 'What is written on number 7?', 'Where is number 11?' and so on. If you got all the answers you got a small chocolate egg. This turned out to be great fun.
I did 'story time' - I used the story of Dave the Donkey - if you ever want really cool bible stories for children that Australian site is brilliant!
And now to today where, in Sunday school, we were looking more seriously at Palm Sunday. We were considering, at one point, why the crowd shouted that Jesus was the son of David.
"We learn quite a lot about David last year - remember? He was a famous king, and he is also famous for killing a giant..."
Nine year old boy - "Wasn't that Jack?"
The best bit was watching a twelve year old girl rolling her eyes whilst trying not to laugh out loud!
To prove how slowly spring moves north, I took this picture three days ago at our local hospital when I was visiting Mum. As you can see there are a few open blooms, but it is mainly just in bud.
Messy Easter - it was a bright sunny day yesterday, with little wind and so, although it was only about 14C, it was a day for doing outdoor things. So we did worry that there would be no children at Messy Church but there were - 14 of them, with associated adults, which wasn't too bad. The NYM brought the children - D-d was at the wedding of a work colleague. We made 'palm palms' like these but I didn't take a picture of ours! And there were Easter baskets, and chocolate crispie cake nests - and we made donkeys! I do have a picture of them -
Card body shape and wooden clothes pegs for feet!
But the biggest hit was actually to follow a trail of paper palm leaves through the building and the garden, like a treasure hunt. Each leaf had a number, and then there were simple questions to answer to prove you had found them - 'what colour is number 5?' 'What is written on number 7?', 'Where is number 11?' and so on. If you got all the answers you got a small chocolate egg. This turned out to be great fun.
I did 'story time' - I used the story of Dave the Donkey - if you ever want really cool bible stories for children that Australian site is brilliant!
And now to today where, in Sunday school, we were looking more seriously at Palm Sunday. We were considering, at one point, why the crowd shouted that Jesus was the son of David.
"We learn quite a lot about David last year - remember? He was a famous king, and he is also famous for killing a giant..."
Nine year old boy - "Wasn't that Jack?"
The best bit was watching a twelve year old girl rolling her eyes whilst trying not to laugh out loud!