You will need: two large, old coats with strong pockets; some heavy stones.

• Warm up the children with some simple relay races, hopping and jumping.
• All standing up, divide the children into two teams, and place a coat at the feet of the first person in both teams.
• The first person from each team puts on the coat, runs to the end of the room and back, takes it off, then the next child puts on the coat and runs, in relay style.
• Once everyone has done this, add the stones to the pockets of the coat to make it as heavy as possible.
• Repeat the relay with the heavier coats.
• Afterwards, discuss how it felt with/without the weights, and how we can be ‘weighed down’ in life with worries and difficulties, but Jesus wants to help us.

Make and think

Weights of the world (C+YP 15 mins)

A time for reflection

You will need: some large, at stones; paints and brushes; reflective music and the means to play it.

• Give each youngster a stone and ask them to think about things that are worrying them, or things that they may have done and are sorry about. Don't pressure them to talk, but some may want to.
• Ask them to make worried or sad faces and look at each other's expressions. Play some reflective music.
• Invite the youngsters to draw themselves, with a worried or sad expression, on their stone.
• Tell them how Jesus told his disciples not to be weighed down with worries.

Look and learn

Signs of the seasons (C 15 mins)

Identifying natural signs

You will need: books about the weather, pictures of different seasonal scenes or a computer and Google Images.

• Show some images of different seasons and ask the children to shout out what season each picture is showing. How can they tell?
• Encourage discussion about the signs of each season beginning. For example, leaves growing on the trees in spring, mornings getting darker in winter.
• Talk about ways they can tell that Christmas is coming – point out the Christmas tree, and they might mention town lights, adverts on television, practising for nativity plays.
• With older children, talk about old fashioned weather predictions and how rural people still look for signs around them to predict the weather, for example ‘Red sky at night...’, cows lying down. Use pictures to illustrate these signs.
• Provide time for the group to reflect quietly on their ideas.
• Link to today's Bible story. Jesus was talking about signs that God's kingdom is near. There may be signs of bad times ahead, but there will also be signs of hope for those who know what to look for.

Make

Advent baubles (C+YP 15 mins)

An ongoing craft activity

You will need: foam or sponge balls, tennis-ball size (younger children may find it easier with a larger ball); ribbon or twine; Christmas wrapping paper; Advent 1: paper decorated with sun, moon and stars; Advent 2: coloured pipe cleaners; Advent 3: reflective paper and fabrics; Advent 4: a body outline template; glue, glitter or thin tinsel.

• Invite people to work together to create a Christmas bauble. They should begin by stapling or securing a length of Christmas ribbon, twine or wire to the ball to form a hanger.
• They wrap Christmas paper around their ball and glue it on.
• Each bauble will show ideas from the four weeks of Advent. For this first week in Advent, the youngsters should mark out their ball into four quarters, segmented from top to bottom. First segment: Invite the youngsters to fix the sun and moon and stars images to their first bauble segment. They might add glitter to it. Continues next week.

Play

Ladders (YP 15 mins)

A game to test if you are ready

• Divide the group into two teams and ask one team to sit on the floor beside each other with their legs stretched out in front of them.
• Ask the other team to sit opposite one person from the other group, again stretching out their legs in front of them. You end up with two long parallel lines, with people in each line sitting beside one another with a bit of space in between. If everyone puts their legs out straight in front of them, their feet touching the person’s in the line opposite, this creates a ladder of legs. Number the first couple 1, the second couple 2, and so on.
• Call out a number. When they hear their number, each couple must jump over the legs of everyone down the line, go around the back of their individual line, run to an end point, touch a wall for example, and run back, jumping over the ladder of legs to get back to their places. The winner scores a point for his/her team.