Activity 1: The Christmas Story

• Split the kids into four different groups (you can also only have one person per group, if your group is small). Keep one group in the room with you, but spread out the other groups, so that they are not within earshot of one another: one group down the hall, another in a different room, etc. (If you are doing this online, break them into breakout rooms or ask groups to turn their volume all the way down until you call them back via the chat function.
• Have them relay the Christmas story, like the telephone game – 1st group to 2nd group, 2nd to 3rd group, 3rd to 4th group.
• The last group to hear the story then relays it back to the entire group.
• The leader then reads the original story to the whole group
• Ask the group to comment on how the final group’s rendition differed from the original.
• Reflect upon how the groups did in remembering every detail of the story, and in getting the whole gist.
• Ask group members to remember as much of the story as they can for the next gathering.

Activity 2: The Make-up of the Bible

• Make the connection between the telephone game and the creation of the Bible: that the Bible was written long after the events therein actually occurred.
• Show timeline of when the books of the Bible were written
• Make Observations: The Old Testament is written over a thousand year period (give or take). The New Testament was written over the period of 50 years, all of it after Jesus died.
• Draw connections: the telephone game got the general gist of the story, but not every details. That story was one story, but had a few different ones in there (ie, staying up late at night, opening the presents, having dinner…). Same with the Bible.