Children and Families - Scripture Union NZ

These are a handful of quick ideas you can use to explore the Christmas story with children. They accompany photographs that I took in Israel in 2011, but you can google your own images as well. __________________________________________________________________ Map it!   The places mentioned in the Christmas story were not well known in Jesus day. But they sure became famous! We know about Bethlehem, Nazareth and the hill country of Judea because they all feature in the biblical story of Christmas. It's helpful for children to know where these places are. That way they don't seem like a fairy tale. Bethlehem is not in a land far far away, but is a real place.  Activities: Print out black and white maps of Israel. Give the children gold star stickers to mark the places mentioned in the Christmas story. Provide an atlas or google maps to help you.    Click here for a free black and white map.  Click here for an interactive colour map....

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever" 1 Chronicles 16:34   When my brother married an American, a new festival entered my family calendar: Thanksgiving. To me, Thanksgiving is a much overlooked American celebration, one that trumps Halloween in my opinion.  Over the years we have attempted a few different things. We replaced turkey with fresh fish, and pumpkin pie with strawberries. The first year we tried going around in a circle saying what we were thankful for. For a family that doesn't share emotions easily, this was somewhat awkward.  Our most successful idea was to create a Thankful Tree. Over the course of the afternoon, family members could write on a paper disk something they were thankful for, and hang it on the tree. We enjoyed reading each other's ideas and even the youngest of us wrote a word or two. Our most hilarious idea was to invite everyone to bring along a food they were thankful for. We ended up with a...

This is the third blog post in our four part series of fabulous Ch ristmas ideas. Click on these links to read the other posts:  1.  Christmas Music 2. Christmas Crafts   And this post, is all about images, media, photos and fonts! Images: There are plenty of websites out there with images you can download. Here are a couple of my favourites. They are free and they are easy to search and use.  - freeimages.com A one stop shop for all the photos you might ever need!   - pixabay.com But wait, there's more! And if you want to add any effects, borders, or text to your images this is an easy to use, fun site: befunky.com Media Clips: Max 7:    Look no further! Max7.org has a fabulous series of Christmas video clips. The narration is straight from the CEV Bible so the children can follow along in their Bibles. And, these videos are around 3 minutes long, just the right length. And, they are FREE to download. Check out the rest o...