The hero in this story is Anna, she is part of the ‘friends of Jesus’ series as her story directly involves him. Please note this lesson is not about Simeon, though the narratives are similar – Anna is focused on to give a better gender balance to the hero’s
observations tray – This is an oldie but really suits the idea of Anna looking for baby jesus. place a random selection of items on a tray, give the children a 30 seconds to memorise what’s there. remove the tray and return it minus one object – what’s missing?
Baby bingo – Print the accompanying PDF sheets and make sure each child has a bingo card. Call out descriptives of a baby for them to stamp off – eg eye colour, clothing style, hair length. Play a line and then a full card.
balloon prizes – take some small objects and push them into balloons. fill the balloon with water. Place a small piece of sticky tape on the side of the water balloon and pierce through the tape and the balloon to produce a small flow of water. the aim of the game is to guess what the object inside the balloon is before the water is all gone. If someone guesses correctly they can throw the balloon at a hard surface so that it breaks and the ‘prise’ is revealed.
Find the baby – find a picture of a baby, or a small doll and hide it in the room using the same rules as hide the thimble.
