Mary Magdalene is a great character, sometimes seen as the female Apostle she is the first witness of the resurrected Christ. These games link into various parts of the story, the way she mistook Jesus as a gardener, her role in the group, the oils she bought for a task she never fulfilled and more. Some of these activities are more suited to the start of a session, while others would work better later on.
Who am I? – This is a classic game involving a blindfold and lots of people trying to disguise their voice. Have the child playing ‘Mary Magdalene’ sit in a chair blindfolded, point to one other child and get them to call out “Mary Magdalene” – Can the child with the blindfold tell who it is?
Smell bags – Mary goes to buy oils to anoint the body at the beginning of this story. Use some kind of container, a cloth bag works the best but cardboard boxes with salt shaker holes are just as easy. Then find some familiar smells, shampoo’s, perfumes, soap, chopped vegetables, spices, cleaning products, candles, fruit, flavoured crisps, etc. Either place ‘the smell’ inside the container or onto a tissue inside the container and get the kids to identify it.
Where have you put him? – This is part of the questions Mary asks Jesus, thinking he is the gardener. Best played as a warm up activity, use this question to play a game of hunt. Print out the picture provided (click on the smaller image for the bigger one to load) and cut along the dotted lines. Hunt out parts, talk about the picture then lead into the story, reveal the second picture at the end of the story.
That looks like a… – The idea of this game is to identify a picture while only being able to see a small amount. Take a large envelope and cut a small hole in the side (a hole punch will do this neatly, don’t worry about having holes on both sides). slip a picture into the envelope and give it to the children. The children will probably try and more the picture about to see as much as possible.
Plus one – If there was a female apostle it probably would have been Mary Magdalene, have the kids come up with suggestions of other ‘plus one’ characters for groups they know. Have one child stand up and name a group (eg The X-Men) and then have the group come up with a good suggestion for a ‘plus one’ (eg Queen Elsa from Disney’s Frozen).
