The Christmas Promise: A Three-Session Curriculum With a Family Service Outline

It also contains a helpful outline for an Advent all-age service. I’m really impressed with this resource. ‘The Christmas Promise’ is split into 3-5s and 5-12s – but the 5-12s also has a different set of Bible questions for 5-7s and 8-12s. Sometimes kids’ group resources can be a little moralistic, but this content will really help kids get into the Bible and learn about the significance of God’s promised king arriving as a baby.

There are creative craft ideas (and a choice, depending on how involved you want to get), relevant games, and interactive ways to explain what the Bible is saying. There is free downloadable material available with a code inside the book, so you can share this resource easily across your kids’ work team. ‘The Christmas Promise’ is a very helpful resource to just pick up and use if you have little time to prep, or you have less experienced volunteers – and each session starts with a ‘Prepare your heart’ section for leaders to read and reflect before they start to plan. This is a great aspect, particularly for volunteers who may be new to faith themselves. The 3-5s material helpfully shares which components are essential and which could be left out if no time.

My two small gripes are firstly that it would be helpful to have a similar guide for the 5-12s – an experienced leader could work out which bits were essential and which could be left out, but a newer volunteer might appreciate some help. And secondly, there are some long-ish scripts to either read or memorise. I personally struggle with this aspect of many Sunday school curriculums – but I can see it does make life easier for those less able to wing it! Overall ‘The Christmas Promise’ is an excellent resource, especially with the all-age service plan which I can see would be engaging for all ages.