Friday's Holy Week Holiday Club material focuses on the resurrection
THEME
Jesus is alive. A new way of life begins. Mary hears his voice, but does not recognise it until he says her name. The disciples do not believe what they hear. Do we?
GATHER
As the children arrive, tell them the name of an animal and ask them to try to find another child who has been given the same name.
STORY
John 20.1-17
Use a book or a video clip, or this story:
One of Jesus' friends, Mary Magdalene, couldn't sleep. She decided to go to the tomb where Jesus' body had been laid. It was still dark and she was very sad, but this was going to turn into a very special morning.
Just as the sky was beginning to get light, she came to the tomb. She couldn't believe her eyes. The first rays of the sun shone brightly now and she could see that the big stone had been rolled away. (If you made a large tomb yesterday, roll away the stone to reveal a space with just a folded white sheet in it.) Mary saw that his body had gone. She ran to bring some other friends, Peter and John. They went inside the tomb and saw the sheet Jesus had been wrapped in, but he wasn't there.
Mary was crying because she thought someone had stolen Jesus' body. A man spoke to her. She couldn't see properly because of her tears, and at first she didn't recognise his voice. Then he said her name, ‘Mary’ very softly and she knew he was Jesus. Mary was so happy and excited. He was alive! He was risen from the dead!
TALK ABOUT
Will you be having Easter eggs? They remind us of Jesus. An egg looks like a dead stone, but inside a fertilised egg is a little baby bird – a new life. Easter eggs remind us of the stone cave where Jesus was laid when he was dead. He came out when he was alive again. He gives us new life too.
CRAFTY MAKES
- Make flowers from tissue paper. For each flower, take two or three circles of tissue paper. Scrunch them in the middle and twist half a pipe cleaner around them to make a short stem. Separate the layers of paper to make petals. Save them for the worship time.
- Photocopy an outline of an egg onto card. Each child can draw patterns on the egg then cut it up to make a jigsaw. Remind the children that eggs are only useful when we break them, just as Jesus' tomb was special because he broke out of it.
- Add lots of flowers or colour to the Easter gardens you made yesterday.
- Fold coloured paper in half and cut out half a butterfly shape along the fold. Younger children could use a template. Open out the butterfly and decorate with paint, glitter, sequins and so on. Talk about how butterflies coming from caterpillars can also remind us of new life.
FUN AND GAMES
Pass the whisper. Children sit in a circle. Whisper a message like, ‘Mary discovered Jesus was alive’ to one child and get them to pass the message on to their neighbour until it comes back to the first person. Is the message the same or has it been changed?
Dead or alive? Children dance around, all saying together a rhyme, ‘Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea, catching fishes for my tea. Dead or Alive?’ The leader then says either ‘dead’ and children must lie down very still or ‘alive’ and children must do star jumps showing how much they enjoy being alive. You can add other variations of what to do when they are ‘alive’ if you want to.
WORSHIP
Make sure the children have their tissue-paper flowers when they come to their places, and that they can all see the cardboard-box cross you made yesterday. Use some songs or music. When the children are ready to pray, remind them that the cross looks plain and dull. Ask them to tell you all the good things about being alive and while they do, they can fix their flowers to the cross. Now it looks full of new life.
PRAYER
Lord God,
thank you for loving us so much that you gave us your son Jesus.
We remember at Christmas how he was born in Bethlehem.
Now at Easter we remember that he died because he loves us,
and he rose again to be with us always.
Help us to hear him when he calls us by name.
Amen.
TAKEAWAY
Give the children a small chocolate egg to take home. Or you could invite their parents or carers to stay for a cup of coffee and a hot cross bun.