Hope Journey Epiphany – Journey with the Kings

HOPE JOURNEY EPIPHANY – JOURNEY WITH THE KINGS

 

Hope Journey Epiphany – Journey with the Kings

What a joy to be able to share Epiphany – Journey with the Kings with over 90 Year 1 children from Greasby Infant School (morning) and Brookdale Primary School (afternoon) on Thursday 13th January

Our Journey to school map

This year we were able to follow the usual programme.  Following our welcome and introduction

  • The children completed a Journey to School map, drawing all the things they had noticed as they walked to church.  This created the context of journeying
  • We introduced our three ‘very special friends’ who had travelled a long, long way to share their story and we watched the puppet sketch of the three magi retelling their experiences of travelling and meeting the baby Jesus
  • We talked about the significance of gold, frankincense and myrrh as gifts for a future King
  • and about gifts which would be suitable to give to a baby and what we can give Jesus as our gift (being kind, looking after each other eg helping someone who falls over, sharing toys and sweets, even helping parents by keeping our bedroom tidy!)
  • We sang Our God is a Great Big God – with gusto!
  • The children then completed three workshop activities which included writing or drawing our gift(s) to Jesus on a star which was glued onto their journey map; playing the ‘Build a Magi’ game (bit like a beetle drive) whilst enjoying refreshments and a ‘Three Kings’ craft activity
  • During the plenary we talked about how the magi changed their direction, before we committed ourselves to being the kind of people God wants us to be. 
The three Magi retell their story

We gave the children gifts too – an Epiphany Prayer card to share with the family at home, an invite to our church activities, the child friendly Say One for Me card, a Meet The Cast (Lifewords) story book which tells the Christmas story and a bag of Haribo Starmix, to remind us of the star the wise men followed to find Jesus and the gifts they took as we share our sweets with each other

Meet The Cast – the Christmas story

We are now looking forward to our next Hope Journey – Cross Factor (Easter story) which will take place on Thursday 31st March, for Year 5 children from Greasby Junior School and Brookdale Primary School.

Sue Elliott

Hope Journey co-ordinator

Everyone enjoyed having breakfast with Santa!

 

We were thrilled when Santa managed to pop into Greasby Methodist Church to join us for breakfast on Saturday 18th December.  Despite a rather busy schedule, he arrived about 9.00am to the joyous singing of children and families.  Santa was really pleased to hear Jingle Bells and the songs about his reindeer, Rudolf.  He listened carefully to all the hopes of the children as we ate a hearty breakfast – it was not only the adults who enjoyed the bacon butties!

Xandie enjoys his breakfast with Santa

To our surprise Santa did not know what we are really celebrating at Christmas so the children gathered around to help Paul tell him the Good News story of how and where Jesus was born, the shepherds called to visit Him first as well as the wise men who brough their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  We shared the news that Good News that Jesus was born to be King of the World.  We enjoyed singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus, the best gift that anyone could ever receive.  However Santa did have some lovely presents for each of the children, and it was sad when he had to go on his way.  But we hope to see him again next year

Sue Elliott

Children and Families co-ordinator