The Palms Sunday story is a simple one, and begins the story of Holy Week, the week Jesus died and came back to life.
Here’s a simple way to explore the story
(You could use the Palm Sunday Cut and Colour Sheet.)
Listen to or read the story together
Do your children know the story of Palm Sunday? If not, read in Mark 11: 1, 7 – 10 or listen to it here.
Context Quiz
If they’re familiar with it, why not give the story a bit of context with this game of True or False. Read out the statements below and challenge everyone to guess if it’s true or false. You can make this a physical game by labelling one place in your space ‘true’ and another ‘false’. People must move to the area which represent their answer.
- True or False: The events of Palm Sunday happened as Jesus was travelling to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover festival.
True: Jesus was travelling there along with hundreds of others who went there from all over for the Passover festival. - True or false: In Mark’ gospel, Jesus predicts his death five times.
False: It’s three time - True or false: In John’s gospel, the event recorded just before this in John’s gospel is Mary annointing Jesus’ feet.
True! This is in John chapter 12. - The word Hosanna literally means ‘blessed’.
False: It literally means ‘save’. - Bethphage is 5km from Jerusalem.
True: See here - The Garden of Gethsemane (where Jesus prayed the night he was betrayed by Judas) is outside the city of Jerusalem, near to Bethphage.
True: See here
With this extra context, now read or listen to the story of Jesus coming into Jerusalem.
Reflection
Offer the following questions one at a time for people to think about and share if they want to:
• I wonder which part of this story was your favourite part.
• I wonder where in the crowd you might be.
The word ‘hosanna’ means ‘save us’ or ‘rescue us’.
• I wonder what you might like to be rescued from today?
Response
If possible, allow time for people to respond as they chose to the story.
You might like to offer this cut and colour sheet, where they can colour the pictures and cut them out and use them like puppets to re-tell the story.
You could also offer some hosanna songs like these