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Palm Sunday is a great opportunity to get children and families in your small churches excited about Easter Sunday! Having special Palm Sunday activities for younger children to participate in is a great way to teach and review the story of Jesus’ triumphant entry. Whether you use these Palm Sunday activities and ideas for your Sunday School or send them home with families to do together, we hope your small church experiences the joy of a Palm Sunday Celebration!
The Palm Sunday Story And Why We Should All Celebrate It
The Sunday before Easter is called Palm Sunday because, as Jesus entered Jerusalem for the Passover Feast, the people were so excited to see Him coming. They threw Palm branches and cloaks on the road to honor Him and pave the way for His arrival! It was a moment of joy and excitement because they were welcoming the Messiah into their town! People in churches all around the world still use Palm branches to celebrate the joy that this time of the year brings.
Palm Sunday is like the ‘kick-off’ event for Holy Week. It brings the entire Easter story into focus, as we see the events of God’s redemptive plan unfolding before our eyes. We can think of Palm Sunday as the first official step to the cross. This is why it’s so important to have engaging Palm Sunday activities.
You can read about the Palm Sunday account in all four of the Gospels:
Matthew 21:1-17, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-48, and John 12:12-50.
Why These Palm Sunday Activities Are Perfect For Younger Kids
We all know that we learn better when we are engaged a the lesson. Having fun Palm Sunday activities and hands-on crafts is a great way to inspire your children to soak up what they’re learning. Incorporating as many of the senses as you can increases our capacity to retain what we learn!
By incorporating some of these out-of-the-box activities in your small church, you’ll give children the chance to create, while also making an impact on their faith journey. Just think, as these kids bring their craft home and share what they’ve learned with others, you are, essentially, reaching their whole family! Small activity, big impact!
7 Best Palm Sunday Activities
1. Make A Video/Act It Out
Materials Needed:
- Clothing items for Bible costumes: You can find simple costumes online. Things like bathrobes, old choir robes, pieces of stray fabric, etc will work as well!
- Palm fronds: These can be either real or fake.
- One volunteer to video the story for you.
Instructions:
After reading and talking about the Palm Sunday story, assign parts to the children. Get everyone in their costumes, lay out where your ‘path’ will be, and ‘Action’!
It would even be a great idea to have the children join together for a song at the end!
They could all shout Hosana while jumping up and down with excitement. They could even sing a praise song like This Little Palm of Mine, which is sung to the tune of This Little Light of Mine!
Not only will children love being involved in the interactive story retelling, but they’ll have so much fun watching themselves on the final video! Allowing them to be such an integral part of the lesson will show them that they are valued as part of your class. You will be helping them to gain confidence and discover that they can share Jesus with others around them! Perhaps your pastor would even allow it to be shown in your church service!
2. Make A Palm Sunday Diorama
Materials Needed:
- Empty Shoeboxes: Ask your church family if they have any to donate!
- Small garden stones or pebbles
- Small leaves: These could be from outside or even homemade using construction paper or felt.
- Wooden round-top clothespins
- Chenille stems (peach or white colors)
- Self-adhesive green felt pieces
- Random pieces of green paper or recycled pieces of fabric
- Craft glue or hot glue gun
- Scissors
Instructions:
Be sure to have all the materials out and available for all your little artists to choose from. Explain to them that a diorama is a recreation of something in miniature form. Let them know that they’ll be making the Triumphant Entry scene from the Palm Sunday account in the Bible.
They will make the Triumphant Entry Scene from the Palm Sunday account in the Bible (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, or John 12). They can use any of the materials above to make their scene!
This is a fun Palm Sunday activity that your kids will love, but it also serves as an opportunity to discuss the importance of the Triumphant Entry and Jesus’ obedience to His Father. Talk about the different opinions the people had about who Jesus was and why they felt this way. This is a great time to answer any questions your children might have and review the lesson for a deeper impact!
3. Host A Palm Parade in Your Church Service
Materials Needed:
- Biblical time costumes for kids: Ask around, maybe people can help!
- Palm branches to wave and some branches to put down on the ground before the children enter: You can use real palm branches or buy some from the craft store
- A few pieces of fabric to use as cloaks
- Optional: Signs for kids to hold up as they march. They could read things like “Hosanna,” “Blessed Be the Name,” “Hallelujah,” “King of Kings,” etc.
Instructions:
Before you start planning and getting things together, be sure to get the approval of your pastor for this parade! You can, then, start your small church Palm Sunday service with a parade of children in costume, and waving palms! Be sure to choose an upbeat song for them to march in with. Then, have children give some palm branches to a few people in the congregation.
Have the kids hold up the signs they made and praise God as they walk! The children will proceed to parade up to the front of the congregation and continue to hold up their signs and palm branches while the pastor welcomes everyone and opens in prayer. Perhaps, one of the kids could read a scripture from the Palm Sunday account and another could do the opening prayer!
Involving your children in the worship service at your church is a great way to acknowledge their value in the small church family. You are allowing them to be an active part of worship and opening up possibilities for future involvement. This small parade is a fun activity to get your entire church excited about the kick-off to Holy Week!
4. Palm Sunday ‘Crying’ Stones!
Materials Needed:
- Small to medium-sized stones to decorate: You can find them in the floral section of most craft stores.
- Paint Pens, Sharpies, or Acrylic Paint
Instructions:
Be sure to thoroughly wash and dry your stones several days in advance! On the day of the event, start your class by reading the account of Jesus’ Triumphant Entry. Be sure to draw focus to the following Bible verse:
But He answered and said to them, ‘I tell you that if these [people] should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.’
Luke 19:40 – NKJV
Explain to the children that they are going to ‘cry’ out praises of Jesus by painting on the stones! After painting them, let them go around and place them in different places around your church property if they want to. They could even take them home and place them around their neighborhood! the children can take them home and place them around their neighborhood.
Fun activities like this encourage creativity and spark an understanding of what it means to spread the love of Jesus Christ. It is a perfect way to inspire our children to live out their faith!
5. A Donkey Puppet Craft
Materials Needed:
- Pattern for the donkey face
- Brown paper bag
- Large wiggly eyes
- Grey yarn
- Glue sticks
- Scissors
- Crayons
Instructions:
Fill out the form above ^^ to get your pattern!
Print the pattern for the donkey face on cardstock or heavy-weight paper, and cut out the specific pieces. Then, take your brown lunch sack and turn it upside down. Be sure to keep it flat. Place your hand inside the bag and move the bottom flap with your fingers to make the ‘mouth’ area open and shut.
Next, you will attach the donkey’s face and ears to the flap on the bottom of the lunch bag. Make sure not to glue past the fold of the flap, so that portion of the bag will continue to move.
You will then take the grey yarn and loosely wind it around 3 of your fingers, counting 5 times around your fingers. Cut the yarn. Slide it off your fingers and tie the bunch of yarn in the middle with another piece of yarn (3 inches long). Cut the loops of your yarn and glue or staple them to the top of your donkey’s head.
Finally, glue the bottom of the mouth under the flap of the lunch bag. Position it so it sticks out under your donkey’s face. Attach your wiggly eyes to the face, and use crayons to add eyelashes, eyebrows, and a smile if you want!
Invite the children in your small church group to re-tell the story of Palm Sunday with their puppets. As you use this fun craft activity to reinforce the Bible lesson of the day, you can also encourage the kids to share their donkey’s story with their families!
6. Make A Palm Sunday Path Dessert
Materials Needed:
- Boxed cake mix: Pick your favorite flavor!
- Vanilla frosting to cover a 9 x 13 sheet cake
- Shredded coconut tinted with green food coloring
- Crushed graham crackers
- Decorations: malted milk balls, chocolate covered raisins, fruit roll-ups, chocolate sprinkles or jimmies, fresh parsley, a plastic donkey toy
- A cake decorating sheet board to place the cake on
Instructions:
Prepare cake as directed. Bake in a 9 x 13 sheet pan. When the cake has cooled, turn your cake out onto the decorating sheetboard. Frost the cake with any type of white frosting, covering both the top and sides. Take a knife and mark out a winding path across your cake. Then, take your crushed graham crackers and place them on the cake to be the dirt path. Outline the path with the chocolate sprinkles to represent small pebbles.
Proceed to decorate the rest of the cake top with the green shredded coconut. This represents the grass! You can use the fruit roll-up and cut it into pieces that look like tunics and place 2 or 3 of them along the path. Use your malted milk balls, and covered raisins as bigger rocks. You can place them along the outside of your path.
Finally, place your donkey at the beginning of the path, and place a fruit roll-up tunic on his back. Take small pieces of fresh parsley and sprinkle them along the path for the palm leaves.
Show everyone your cake, talk about the Palm Sunday story, and then eat & enjoy!
Make this great activity a family and multi-generational gathering. This can be a great time to talk about God’s Word and what the Palm Sunday account means leading into the celebration of Resurrection Sunday. Who doesn’t like a delicious object lesson?
7. Palm Sunday Praise Scavenger Hunt
Materials Needed:
- Bibles and pencils for the kids
- Scavenger Hunt printout, which is located below: Keep in mind that this was written with NIV references in mind.
- A large palm leave made from poster board or green construction paper
- Permanent markers
- A prize for the winner along with smaller prizes for everyone who completes the task
Instructions:
Fill out the form above ^^ to get your Scavenger Hunt printable!
Read the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry to the kids. Talk about all the different things the people shouted out during Jesus’s entry, the praises, the names they used for Him! Tell them that they are going to have a scavenger hunt in the Bible to find the different names of Jesus and different praise words used to express our love and worship of Him.
The best part about this activity is that, at the end of class, you will write all the words on the big palm leaf in celebration of Palm Sunday!
Distribute the Bibles and the Scavenger Hunt sheets, but have everyone place them face down on the table. When you say GO, the kids flip the papers over and begin to work. The person or team who finishes the sheet first wins the main prize! The rest of the children get a little something for doing the hunt!
If you have a mixed age group for your small church class, be sure to have an alternative activity for the younger children. A coloring sheet with stickers about Jesus riding in on a donkey for Palm Sunday might be fun! You could even invite an older person from your small church to come in and help the younger children make the donkey puppet that we mentioned in Activity #5 of this article. This is a great way to encourage intergenerational connections!
On Your Way To A Phenomenal Palm Sunday
By incorporating some of these fun Palm Sunday activities into your Sunday School, Kids Club, Children’s church, or even your home, you will see the great impact it can have on your kids! Jesus loved to teach with words, pictures, and object lessons. We are just teaching like Jesus, and it helps our kids to develop and deepen their own faith journeys.
All of these activities will help to encourage conversation about the entire story of Easter and give your children the opportunity to ask questions as they need. Remember that time spent together crafting, cooking, creating, or praising is a time for connections to be made and relationships to be built with the children of our small church ministries. This is a lot of fun, and is the perfect way to celebrate Palm Sunday in your kids’ ministry!
We’d love to hear if you used Palm Sunday activities. Take a picture and share it on our Facebook page, Creative Solutions for Small Churches, Let us cheer you on!
For even more great ideas, check out the links below!
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