• Sometimes we don’t know what God is doing and this can be a bit confusing! Remember, the disciples didn’t know why Jesus had asked them to fetch Him a donkey but they trusted Him and they did it anyway!
• Can you imagine a big important king riding on a simple little donkey? What about the fancy horse and robes? You see, Jesus wasn’t a normal king trying to show that He was important and He wasn’t trying to force everyone to serve Him. He came to show love and kindness and serve people instead!
• Easter is coming up soon and it’s all about Jesus’s amazing rescue and how He sacrificed Himself to save us! Palm Sunday is a reminder of just how special that rescue was and how much Jesus loves everyone! That includes you and me! He loves us so much that He came to save us and look after us forever!
• When people saw Jesus arrive in Jerusalem, lots of them praised Jesus! They welcomed Him! Some people didn’t recognise that Jesus was the King though and that He’d come to rescue them, that made Jesus sad! In a few days time, Jesus would show everyone how much He loved them!

Some things to talk to your family about…

• What does a King or Queen look like? What is their job? What is the best party you could imagine to throw for a King or Queen?
• What do you think that Jesus wants most of all? Does He want a big party? Or do you think that there are other things that are more important to Him? What could they be?
• Are there ever any things that you don’t understand? Perhaps there are some things that Jesus tells us to do but we aren’t sure why? Remember, we can talk to each other and our families about these things and we can tell Jesus when we don’t understand too! He loves it when we share our thoughts with Him! 
• In this day and age, news travels really fast doesn’t it? We have lots of technology to help us hear about things and share news quickly. At the moment, we are still able to call our friends and family and still able to see them on video which is wonderful. In Jesus time, they didn’t have video calls or any phones at all! How do you think the news of Jesus coming travelled? How do you think we can tell people who don’t know Him about Jesus today?

Memory Verse

“You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” John 13:7 NIV

Pictionary!

Why don’t you have some fun and play a game of pictionary with whoever you’re with today! Sit down with a pen or pencil and some paper. Think of something you could draw (e.g. an apple) start to draw it without saying a word! Let the other person / people guess what you are drawing. Then let them have a turn. Ask them to think of something in their head and then draw it. You’ll see pretty quickly that sometimes we guess the wrong things – for example, you could be drawing a cat and someone might think that you’re drawing a plate of spaghetti! This is because we don’t always see the full picture until it’s finished.

As well as being fun to play with your family, this game can also help you remember that it’s a bit like that with life sometimes! Sometimes we don’t understand what Jesus is doing in our life or the lives of our friends and family, but that’s because we can’t see the whole picture yet! Jesus always has a BIG picture that He is working on, and He promises that one day, He’ll show us what He was doing all along. Until then we just have to trust him!

Prayer time

So many people were able to see and praise Jesus on the special day of Palm Sunday, they were able to welcome Him in! 

Let’s think about Jesus for a moment and welcome Him into our hearts! Why don’t you close your eyes for a moment. Is there anything in your heart that you want to say to Jesus right now? Maybe there is something that you don’t understand, that’s ok, remember you can tell Jesus anything! Or maybe if you want to hear from Jesus, you could just wait a moment and see if He says anything to you? Perhaps you’d like to share this with your families and pray together afterwards too!

Craft time

Palm leaf!

Many people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem by waving palm branches as they cheered Him and praised Him! They clapped their hands as they sang praises to the Lord Jesus. They wanted everybody to know how much they loved Jesus who had been so kind and gentle to them and who was their King! 

Today, we can make some palm leaves and we can also wave these whilst we sing our praises to Jesus in worship or we can stick them up somewhere in our house to remind us all that Jesus is our King and He loves us very much!

If you like, you could even write the memory verse we learnt today on the leaf!

Instructions

Draw an oval on a piece of A4 paper that is either green or has been coloured in green and cut this out, cut the edges slightly to give the effect of a palm leaf. If you are able, attach the leaf to a lollipop stick or maybe even a twig ‘branch’ from outside!

Materials needed:

• Paper
• Scissors
• Green pens/pencils

Optional:

• Green paper
• Glue
• Lollipop sticks / twigs as branches

Note to families:

The Bible App for kids is another good resource to use at home with your children if you’d like. You’ll find animated bible stories, as well as different activities related to each story that the children may be able to complete or themselves or that you can complete all together as a family.