OBJECTIVE: To provide an activity for children in grades 1-2 during the Christmas season that requires "giving", thus emphasizing the real meaning of the holiday.
PREPARATION: In advance it is necessary to send "Baby Shower" invitations home to the children's parents, so they will know what is happening. You may make these or buy ready-made invitations. Children are asked to bring a wrapped gift for a baby...we sent home a list of ideas.
DECORATIONS: Decorate your room as if for a baby shower...pink and blue streamers (or just blue, since you know it's a boy!), umbrellas, stork centerpiece, balloons, etc.
FOOD: Have a birthday cake for baby Jesus. Our's read "Happy Birthday Jesus" and it was pink and blue...like a shower cake! We served punch in baby bottles... kids love trying to drink through rubber nipples! Nuts and mints are optional... but have you ever been to a shower without them?
FOR FUN: Plan to play several shower games like the memory game (put baby items on a tray...look at them for 30 seconds, then cover them & see how many of them the children can recall.) Keep the age level of the children in mind....you don't want to play word scramble with 1st graders who don't all spell and read!
FOR THOUGHT: We invited the director of the Crisis Pregnancy Center to come and share with the children. She gave a short devotion and talked about what the CPC does. She gave each child a "fetal baby"...the plastic 6 week baby.
FOR OUR GUEST: The director of CPC was given the gifts to open, and they were donated to the CPC. (This should be mentioned on the invitations, so parents are aware of where the gifts are going.) Other options are to donate the goods to a needy family in the community, or to your church nursery.
FAVORS: Children were given party favors as they left...they were baby bottles (the small kind hospitals use and gladly will donate) filled with pink and blue jelly beans (jelly bellies) with pink or blue ribbons on top with a note saying, "Happy Birthday Jesus".
FOR REAL: Some kids really may not know what a baby shower is...tell them, otherwise they come expecting to bathe a baby!
Debbie Stabe, 1993