Christmas Eve Social: Setting the Tone for the Experience (3:15, 4:30, 5:45, 7:30) 3:15 & 5:45 Find the Sheep Large bag of cotton balls; hide cotton balls around room before kids arrive Brown paper lunch bag for each kid 4:30 & 7:30 Stick the Bow on the Box A bandana or blindfold; 1 for each small group Gift Activity Page; 1 for each small group Painter s tape Stick-on bows; 1 for each kid Bible: Communicating God s Truth in Engaging Ways (3:30, 4:45, 6:00, 7:45) Bible Presentation in Large Group Groups: Creating a Safe Place to Connect (3:55, 5:10, 6:25, 8:10) 3:15 & 5:45 Shout It Out Shout It Out labels; 1 label for each kid Green and red paper; 1 piece (of one color) for each kid Tape Crayons Smiley face stickers 4:30 & 7:30 Best News Ever Best News Ever Activity Page; 1 for each kid Crayons Prayer (4:05, 5:20, 6:35, 8:20) No Supplies Dismiss (4:15, 5:30, 6:45, 8:30) 1
Christmas Eve Social: Providing Time for Fun Interaction (Small Groups, 15 minutes) Before kids arrive, pray for each regular attendee by name. Pray for those who might visit your group for the first time. Pray that your kids would develop a heart that would be about everyone knowing Jesus! Ask God to stir their hearts to not keep what they hear this weekend to themselves and for every kid to recognize that they were created to tell this news to the world! 3:15 & 5:45 Find the Sheep What You Need: Cotton balls, brown paper lunch bags What You Do: Act like you re sharing a secret surprise with the kids, and tell them something is hidden around the room. Hand them each their own brown paper bag and let them go looking for the hidden objects. You can tell them they re hot or cold as they look for the cotton balls, or you may want to give them silly clues, like If that cotton ball were a mosquito, it would bite Simone s leg right now! What You Say: Hey! These white fluffy cotton balls kind of look like white fluffy sheep. You know what? I think we talked about some sheep and their shepherds yesterday! [Transition] Let s go to Large Group now and hear some more! Lead your group to the Large Group area. 4:30 & 7:30 Stick the Bow on the Box What You Need: Bandana or blindfold, Gift Activity Page, painter's tape, stick-on bows What You Do: Tape the Gift Activity Page to the wall at the kids eye level. Play a Christmas version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but with a gift and bow instead. Line kids up about two feet away. Let them take turns wearing the blindfold and attempting to stick their box on the gift. The kid who gets his bow the closest to the center of the ribbon wins. To make it more difficult (and more hilarious), spin the kids around three times and point them toward the wall before they stick their bows on the gift. What You Say: That was SUPER fun! Great job, everyone. I ve loved all these crazy fun Christmas games we ve played all month long. Let s head to Large Group! Lead your group to the Large Group area. 2
Christmas Eve Bible: Communicating God s Truth in Engaging Ways (Large Group, 25 minutes) 1. Opener/Closer What You Need: Host Festive Christmas attire GETTING READY Lots of party supplies, such as: o Fun, festive food (be sensitive to food allergies) o Party hats o Streamers o Balloons o Festive plates, cups, napkins Cookie cake Lots of boxes Christmas wrapping paper Packing tape Phone timer Blanket or sheet Table Trash bag 2. Bible Truth What You Need: Historyteller Christmas Story Video 3. Worship What You Need: Hosanna Rocks Go Tell It Good, Good, Father 3
Christmas Eve Bible: Communicating God s Truth in Engaging Ways (Large Group, 25 minutes) Engage kids hearts through a dynamic and interactive Bible Truth, worship, and prayer experience in a Large Group setting. CG: Theme Loop Video CG: Countdown Video CG: Theme Video Leader enters with lots of excitement. Opener LEADER: Merrrrrrrry Christmas, everyone! The week is finally here! In just two days, we get to celebrate the best thing that ever happened when God sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior. Talk about an act of compassion! CG: Life App Video Compassion is caring enough to do something about someone else's need. God saw our need for a Savior, so He sent Jesus. Amazing! CG: Theme TransBack Video At Christmas, one of the ways we celebrate is by giving each other gifts. I have a bunch of gifts for you to open today, but you ll have to work for them. When you unwrap these gifts, you ll see that they re actually clues about how we re going to celebrate Christmas together today. But in order for us to be able to celebrate, you ve got to get all these presents unwrapped in less than two minutes. Do you think you can do it? I guess we ll see! I ll set a timer on my phone for two minutes. Three... two... one... GO! Set your phone timer for two minutes. Note: You ll want to use a phone timer instead of a countdown clock on the screen in case you need to adjust the time a bit. SFX: Upbeat Christmas music Keep an eye on the time. If it looks like the kids will need more time to get all the boxes unwrapped, then help them unwrap them and/or add more time to the timer. Ideally they ll finish just in time. 4
Woo-HOO! That was awesome! You can probably tell what s in store later on today by all the stuff you unwrapped, but we ll have to wait and see if you re right. For now, let s grab some trash bags and toss in the paper and boxes. Then carry your supplies over to the table. SFX: Upbeat Christmas music continues as you clean up Get the kids to put the party supplies on the table. Great job getting everything cleared away, everyone. Let s stay on our feet, because it s time to get our worship on! Worship LEADER: I love worshipping God all year, but there s something extra-special about singing Christmas songs together. Almost everyone loves Christmas songs or at least knows them really well which reminds me that Jesus came for everyone. Our Memory Verse this month reminds us of that truth too. It s John 3:16. CG: Blank Memory Verse Slide CG: Memory Verse Slide For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (NIrV). Christmas is for everyone for the whole world. Let s sing out loud so everyone will hear and know that our Savior has come! CG: Hossana Rock I definitely felt the joy you guys were bringing! You can have a seat for now. CG: Blank Bottom Line Slide SETTING UP THE BIBLE TRUTH LEADER: Over the last couple of weeks, we ve talked about everything that led up to the time when Jesus was born. We talked about what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph, and how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem among the animals. Tonight, I want you to hear the same history of Christmas from some presenters much closer to your age. Check it out.: CG: Christmas Story WRAPPING UP THE BIBLE TRUTH HISTORYTELLER: God chose shepherds to be the FIRST people to hear that His Son Jesus was born. God could have told anyone first, and instead of choosing people who had power or influence, He chose the shepherds, who were probably pretty dirty, completely unknown, and smelly. God could have chosen priests, governors, even KINGS. But He didn t. He chose the shepherds. He chose the shepherds to show the world that Jesus came for everyone rich and poor, boy and girl, powerful and weak. The Truth of God is for everyone. That s our Bottom Line today. 5
CG: Bottom Line Slide God s love and life is for everyone. Before Jesus, we were in darkness. We were separated from God. But when God sent us His Son, He sent us LIGHT. The Bible says Jesus is the Light of the world (Matthew 5:14), and that means the ENTIRE world. Jesus came for you (point), and you, and you, and you. We can have joy because God s love and life is for everyone. Let s pray together. Pray HISTORYTELLER: Dear heavenly Father, thank You SO much for sending Your only Son, Jesus. Thank You that we get to celebrate that today. Thank You that the Truth of your life is for everyone no matter who they are or where they come from. Help us share Your love and life with others. We love You, and we pray this in Jesus name, amen. LEADER: That s such good news, we can t keep it to ourselves. Let s stand up and worship God with one more song today. The angels sang the good news that Jesus was born, and we can sing it too! SFX: Hark the Herald Angels Sing Way to sing it out, everyone! Go ahead and have a seat just for a minute. Closer LEADER: Can you imagine being one of the shepherds seeing the angels and then seeing Jesus, the Savior who had been born to rescue us? If it happened today, you know we d be snapping pictures and posting it all over the Internet. Because this was the best news EVER! Here s the thing, everyone. It s STILL the best news ever! Just because we re not the first ones to hear it like the shepherds were, that doesn t change the fact that it s news that EVERYONE needs to hear. Everyone needs to know that Jesus was born to be our Savior. We can be a part of spreading the news! CG: Bottom Line Slide God s love and life is for everyone. Say that with me. LEADER and KIDS: God s love and life is for everyone. CG: Blank Bottom Line Slide LEADER: That s so important, because there are still people who don't know that God sent Jesus to rescue us. Not just people in a remote jungle somewhere, but maybe people in your own neighborhood, or even in your own family. When you share that good news with them, you re living out compassion, because you re showing them what God did for our greatest need. That s a great way to [Basic Truth] treat others the way you want to be treated. 6
The fact that Jesus came to be our Savior is, in fact, the best news ever. I think we should celebrate that good news together. Remember those supplies you unwrapped earlier? Who thinks they know what we re going to do? (Pause to let them respond.) That s right we re having a party! I need your help to get everything set up quickly, and then we ll celebrate the good news. I ve even got cup cakes! That s right! Because it s nothing but the best when it comes to the good news about Jesus. Not only are we going to celebrate that good news together, but we re also going to share it. We ll take lots of pictures of our party so your parents can share them on social media. Oh, and you can wear your party hats wherever you go today so people will ask you what you re celebrating. Remember, you can also just share the good news by wishing everyone a merry Christmas and showing them compassion EVERY day. Let s get this party started! CG: Small Group Slide Dismiss children to their Small Groups. 7
Christmas Eve Groups: Creating a Safe Place to Connect (10 minutes) Create a safe place to connect and learn how the Bible Truth applies to real life experiences, through interactive activities and discussion questions. 3:15 & 5:45 Shout It Out What You Need: Shout It Out labels, red and green paper, tape, crayons, smiley face stickers What You Do: Hand out crayons, paper, and fun stickers to each kid and allow kids to decorate their paper. When they seem to be finishing up, help kids roll their papers into a cone shape and secure them with tape, making megaphones. Give each kid a label to place on their megaphone. Instruct kids to wait to use them. What You Say: We have been talking all month about how we have joy because of Jesus! I m excited because Jesus isn t just for me and you. God s love and life is for everyone. Let s use our megaphones to shout out that Jesus is for everyone. One, two, three! JESUS IS FOR EVERYONE! 4:30 & 7:30 Best News Ever What You Need: Best News Ever Activity Pages, crayons, and real newspaper What You Do: Hand out the Activity Pages and ask if anyone knows what it looks like. (A newspaper!) Let kids look at a real newspaper. Ask them a few questions like: Who reads a newspaper? (Hopefully they re not sarcastic enough yet to understand the irony of that question!) Who writes the newspaper? Why do we have them? What kinds of things do newspapers talk about? Let kids begin coloring the picture. Point out the word author and guide kids to notice that it s blank. Tell them they can write their name or draw a small picture of themselves in the blank. Help them fill in the blanks on the page. (joy, God, Jesus) Ask each kid who they are going to give their Best News Ever paper to. What You Say: Wow! Your pictures look like real newspapers! And the best part of them is you get to give them to someone else! Just like we aren t going to keep our papers to ourselves, we don t want to keep the best news ever to ourselves because it s AWESOME! That makes me excited. I know that God s love and life is for everyone. Pray and Dismiss (10 minutes) 8
What to Do: Make one copy on cardstock for each small group. Gift December 2016, Week 4, Small Group 2-3 2016 The rethink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
What to Do: Print the next page on Avery labels 8164 or equivalent. Make enough copies for every kid to have one sticker. Shout It Out December 2016, Week 4, Small Group 2-3 2016 The rethink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
What to Do: Make one copy for each kid. BEST NEWS EVER December 2016, Week 4, Small Group K-1 2016 The rethink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.