Easter and Christmas Journeys

The Easter and Christmas Journeys tell the stories of these well known(?) key events in the Christian calendar in an interactive way that invites children to be part of the stories and maybe see things from a different perspective, by experiencing what happened, rather than just hearing about it.

The children are invited through school and as The Christmas Journey has been developed specifically for Year 2's and The Easter Journey for Year 5's, they engage the children at an appropriate level and they cover most of the key points of the curiculum for these subjects, so it's a win for the teachers as well!

During a 1 week period before Christmas and again before Easter, we turn the church into a "tented village" where different scenes from the stories unfold within a series of gazeboes. In each week we host 10 sessions and see around 300 children from a variety of local schools.

At Christmas they start with the story of creation and consider what we've done to spoil God's wonderful gift and what God did to put it right. They then meet Mary and witness the Angel Gabriel visiting her to give her the news of her pregnancy, before moving onto the hillside where they become the shepherds and sheep and receive a visit from the Angel. The puppet animals in the stable then tell them the story of the night they've just witnessed and then onto the posh home of one of the Wise Men to learn about the gifts they took to Jesus. Finally they come back to the present day and reflect on what God did to put right our mistakes ... "it all started with the baby in the manger".

At Easter they learn about the events that were going on in Jerusalem during the week before Jesus's death. They welcome Jesus to Jerusalem with shouts of 'Hallelujah' before witnessing Jesus's anger when they are selling things in the temple. They then hear about a story that Jesus told about 'the stone that was rejected being the most important'. After that they enter the upper room and share the bread and wine with Jesus and Peter before Jesus goes out to the garden to pray. The children follow and hide in the bushes whilst they listen to the Roman's come and arrest Jesus. An animated video then takes them through the trial and crucifixtion before they consider the mood of 'the day inbetween' (Saturday) and finally go into the light of the Easter morning and hear about Mary Magdalene's meeting with the risen Jesus.

At both events the children are given booklets to take away that will remind them of their experience journeying through a short period of Jesus's life.

Excepting the Covid years, we have been running The Christmas Journey since 2016 and The Easter Journey since 2018, with many of the schools bringing their Year 2's and Year 5's year after year. Feedback from both the children and teachers is always great and the volunteers at church look forward to providing this experience for them every year.