Respond to the Word

For children

With this story you might like to provide the range of activities and materials we suggest and invite the children to choose the way they would like to respond to the story. Each may choose a method that suits their own learning style or just the way that suits the way they are feeling. Any of them that feel any emotional response to the story may appreciate some space to work out their own feelings. If you can’t offer all the options we suggest, ensure there is space and time for children to consider their emotional response and any memories or issues it stirs.

Drama

Act out the story. Create a cave from tables or chairs. Invite the children to compose their own re-creation of how they think things might have happened.

Models

Use clay, or other modelling materials to depict the different characters and their feelings. If you have a longer time, invite the children to create icons of this story. Paint the picture onto rectangles of plywood. Use an egg to mix the paint. Use gold to represent the divine, green for humanity, red for passion and dark colours for the cave.

Moods

Create colour mood paintings for the different characters. Don’t worry about drawing the people but use abstract shapes and patterns.

Adorn

Provide a collection of garden flowers. Invite the children to make simple posies to place on graves that have no flowers. An alternative would be to make simple crosses from twigs and wool to place on graves in the churchyard.

Reflect

If you have provided a collection of icons/ pictures then invite the children to choose a picture they like and find a space to sit quietly to look at their picture. Offer each person a night-light on a saucer to help them think about what this great sign might mean.

Come out!

Provide a collection of large cardboard boxes, tables, chairs and large sheets of material. Create caves and bound-up places. When they are made, invite the children to sit quietly inside. At an appropriate moment ask someone to call Lazarus out. Talk together about the feelings and the experience.

Haiku

Write simple haiku for the different characters in the story. Haiku is a three-line piece of creative writing. The first and last lines have five syllables the middle line has seven.

For young people

Card making

Provide the materials to make cards for someone who is sad. As the cards are being made, talk about who they are for, why that person is sad and what sort of thing you could say to them to try to help. Talk about how it helps to know someone cares.

Bound and unbound

Ask the group to work in pairs and provide a toilet roll for each pair. Invite one of the pair to wrap the other up. Talk about what it feels like to be bound up and how it feels to be released. Discuss what it must have been like for Lazarus when he came out of the tomb and was unbound.

Good news, bad news

Take it in turns to give linked good news and bad news, for example, the bad news is that Lazarus is ill, the good news is that his sisters have sent for Jesus, and so on.

The Lazarus rainbow

Invite the young people to create a rainbow using lots of different colours of pen, paint or paper. Use the colours that they would associate with each part of the story. Emphasise that there is no wrong way of doing this as what a colour says to each individual is very personal to them.

Bound and unbound

Challenge the whole group to make a fully bound ‘mummy’ using toilet roll. You may also do this activity using a roll of scrap paper from a newspaper printer or scrap store. Choose a volunteer and the challenge is to wrap their whole body in as short a time as possible. If you have a larger group of young people this could be done in teams against each other. Once the body is bound the second challenge is to see how quickly it can become unbound.