Each year in partnership with the Bridgebuilder Trust we run the Christmas Cracked & Easter Cracked programmes. We invite the Year 6 students from each of our eight local Primary Schools to join us for a fast-paced 90 min interactive exploration of the events & meaning of Christmas & Easter involving games/quizzes, movie clips, drama, craft activities & discussion. It is designed to meet the requirements of the RE curriculum.

The Easter presentation starts with a quick quiz to determine how much the students already know about Easter & its meaning. We watch a couple of clips from the Miracle Maker to introduce some of the detail of the Last Supper & what happened when Mary ventured to the tomb. The students set out to find some jigsaw pieces which have been hidden around the Church, before piecing them together and exploring the life of Jesus. We have a visit from a real, live Centurion who was in charge of the execution of Jesus. They also visit some storyboards which feature parts of the Easter story and answer questions based on them, before returning to have a stab at their word search & enjoying some light refreshment. Finally we examine the significance of three Easter symbols: the cross, bread & wine, and Easter eggs. This involves an origami/paper-tearing craft activity which often amazes. The session ends with the students being taught to say ‘Happy Easter’ in sign-language, then we give them each a gift (or two) and send them back to school. [see photos below]

Over the last two weeks we’ve run six Easter Cracked sessions at the Church Centre, staffed by 10 volunteers & our two Ministers; we’ve presented the Gospel message of hope & salvation to almost 200 year 6 students (plus approx 15 staff/helpers) and given away approx. 200 Cadbury Creme Eggs. But this is just the tip of the iceberg as throughout Milton Keynes (via the Bridgebuilder Trust) a further 12 Churches have presented the same message to 37 schools and 1600+ students. Even better, we are just a small part of 35 similar projects around the UK which present the message to 220 schools and approx 10,000+ students!

The following pictures are from our final session which involved a small class of 9 students from Bow Brickhill School, who sent the following feedback:

Thanks to you all for a fantastic morning – a great morning was had by all. Harry demonstrated the ‘WOW!’ cross to the rest of the class & I’m planning to include it at our Easter Church service tomorrow!

For more information about running the Christmas & Easter Cracked projects at your Church (or group of Churches) please contact Gill or Rachel at the Bridgebuilder Trust.