April 2023 Messy Church
New Life: The Promise of Easter
Another busy Messy Church in April provided us with an opportunity to celebrate the Easter story over a longer period, as we didn’t meet until 22nd April. We looked at the Easter story in a number of different ways. There were pictures of different stages of the story hidden around the building and once found, they were compiled into small books to tell the story; we made palm branches to wave and small leather donkeys to remind us what that part of the story was about; there was an Easter scene to colour, bracelets to make where the colours of the beads reminded us of the sadness and happiness of the the Easter story. We always try to include a food activity, and this month was no exception. The children rolled out biscuit dough and using cutters in the shape of the cross, made and then decorated the biscuits in coloured sugars-as they made them, they thought about the surprise of Easter-the surprise symbolised in the activity in the change in the sugars once they were baked. The final activity (apart from the regular themed word searches/colouring sheets/crosswords etc) was to create some tissue paper flowers. Flowers are always a symbol of new life and both children and parents created some beautiful flowers which now hang in the Sanctuary-a symbol of new life and a reminder to all church members that Messy Church is an important part of our congregation. We are also grateful to some members of Friday Youths who made some more flowers on the following Friday.We ended the session as Bridget told the Easter story-there were a number of plastic eggs, each of which had a symbol of the story in-it was a great way to remember what we had been learning about.
