Palm Sunday plans

Last year, my church did something special with the adults for Palm Sunday. I can't remember now how it all worked out, but I had a group 3-5 year olds for about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I came up with loads of activities and games to work on for the time.

We read the story Jesus Enters Jerusalem. This is an Arch book that I picked up for less than $3 at the Christian book store. We talked about the main events in the story and broke it down into 5 events. There are activities that go with each event and then a book to complete at the end.

1. Disciples untied the donkey

- We made donkey paper bag puppets. We pretended to untie the donkey and lead them down a path.

2. Clothes were put on the donkey

-I had a large donkey drawn on poster board and pretty good sized clothing items drawn on and cut out of construction paper. We played pin the clothes on the donkey.

3. wave palm branches, shout hosanna

-I drew large palm branches on large sheets of paper. The let the kids sponge paint on the branches and then we cut them out and waved them around.

4. palm branches on the ground

-We took real palm branches (cut fresh from my FL backyard!) and walk around the hall and laid them out.

5. sing praises

-worked on memory verse sheet (water colored it) -sang the song 'Off we go to Jerusalem' (I can't find the words right now, but I'm looking) This was not the memory verse I would have chosen for this week, but I went with the verse from the classes regular curriculum for that week.

Then we worked on the books I made up (there was the opportunity on the pages for more coloring, but this was Bee's pre-enjoying coloring in the lines - she doesn't like to be told where to color.)

Here are the pages to the book- I just found coloring sheets and clip art online. Some from here and here (sorry this was pre-blogging and didn't save my sites) and combined them with some simple text. I don't have it in a word doc or I'd be happy to send it out. If you're local and want a copy, I do have a blank one you could make photo copies of.

1. Jesus sent two disciples to untie a certain baby donkey. (We glued little yellow strips of paper down as straw)


2. They put clothes and robes over the donkey. (Glued paper clothes on the donkeys back- apparently Bee's donkey is well dressed)

3. Jesus rode the baby donkey into Jerusalem. The crowd put clothes and palm branches on the ground. (glued green tissue paper over the palm branches)

4. The crowd of people cheered and shouted 'Hosanna.' (glued on speech bubbles that said Hosanna)

5. Jesus loves to hear our praise. (drew pictures of ourselves and glued on speech bubbles that said "Glory to God," "praise God" and "Hosanna.")

I have to do things like this to get my teaching fix in. I plan to make a series of other bible story book for my kids. I've been planning that for some time now though. Here's the Christmas one we made this year.