Celebrating Christmas with your DWELL Group

An important part of your children’s ministry year is celebrating holy days with your Dwell group. Throughout the Dwell curriculum, a Christmas story is usually included in unit 3. However, years where those stories are told at a different point in the schedule, the Christmas story isn’t included again to avoid too much repetition for the children. We understand that you may still want to mark the occasion, so here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate Christmas with your Dwell group:

• Create nativity scenes using this blog post: How to Create Your Own Nativity Scene Using the DWELL Curriculum. Use the nativity pieces to retell the Christmas story as a large group or in smaller groups of 2-3. Then send the nativity pieces home so the children can share the story with their families and friends.
• Make Advent wreaths together using the suggestions in this post: Bringing the Christmas Season Into Your DWELL Sessions With Simple Advent Wreaths. The 99¢ Advent wreaths were a favorite for my kids. We kept them for years, lighting them for just a few seconds each Sunday so that the candles wouldn’t burn down too quickly!
• Read The Christmas Promise Storybook with your group. This book tells the Christmas story with an emphasis on how Jesus’s arrival was the fulfillment of God’s promise. Accompanying slides are available so that you can show the images while you read the book and there’s an accompanying activity book that you can purchase.
• Try some of the ideas in The Jesus Storybook Bible Advent Activity Book. This book is full of great crafts that use materials you can easily find in your home and fun activities you can do as a group. They are designed to accompany the first twenty-five stories in The Jesus Storybook Bible, but many of them also pair well with the stories in Dwell’s Advent devotional, Jesse Tree: God’s Big Advent Story. You can use either devotional to tell the story and then do the corresponding crafts and activities.
• Have a birthday party for Jesus! Bring in cupcakes, party hats and simple decorations. Sing, “Happy Birthday” to baby Jesus and enjoy your snack together.

Many of these activities can be done before or after whatever sessions you happen to be doing during Christmas. Or you can do one of the larger activities to fill your whole time together. Have ideas to add? Include them in the comments below or on our Facebook group. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!