I recently helped out at a children’s Easter Party, which was arranged by my local Sunday School (St Matthew’s Stretton, Cheshire).

We had 35 children attend ranging in age from 3 to 10 years old.

It was an afternoon session lasting 3 hours, so we designed a program of story & craft activities to keep them entertained along with some party food & an Easter Egg hunt.

We knew that the kids would probably be dropped off over a 15 minute period, so wanted the first activity to be something that could be handed to them on arrival & was easy to explain – which is why ‘Decorate Your Own Craft Bag’ was devised.  It couldn’t have worked better !

We purchased 35 white paper bags with handles (a bit like takeaway bags), along with a tub of foam peal-off brightly coloured letters.  As the children had been pre-booked for the party, we had their names already, so could pre-prepare by putting foam letters into mini bags for each child name (this was a worthwhile exercise as it was very time comsuming!).  To go with this, was a small ‘scroll shaped’ piece of paper, which had a short piece of Christian Scripture printed on & double sided tape on the back.

As each child arrived they were directed to a table to collect their bag, scroll & foam letters.  They then had access to felt tip pens, crayons & coloured pencils – the rest was up to them & their imagination !  Here are some of the great results:

As they finished each of their craft activities throughout the afternoon, they placed the items into their own named bag making it very easy to take them all home at the end.