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Children teach the Lost Sheep

One of the new ideas we've tried out this term is to encourage the children to take a more active part in the teaching on a Sunday morning.  This was our first attempt...


After teaching the 5-11s the story of the lost sheep and getting them to reflect and respond creatively (see here for details), we asked them to think about how they would teach the story to a younger age group.






We divided the lesson into parts:

  • Worship
  • game
  • story
  • craft
  • prayer
Children decided which part they'd like to help lead and then they got into small groups, with some adult input where necessary, and planned what they would do to lead that part of a lesson for 3-5 year olds.



This is the plan they came up with:
  • Worship- sing 'Great Big God' and 'Bigger than big' with actions (children leading)
  • Game- squeak, squeak, Baa, Baa- a variation on a well known game where a child turns their back and has to guess who has said 'squeak, squeak, baa, baa'
  • story- an acted out and narrated telling of the story in which the whole group take the part of sheep, with one chosen to 'run away' and be found by one of the story tellers acting as the shepherd
  • craft- sheep masks- to be made before the story so that they can be worn as part of the story telling.  This involved sticking cotton wool to a face shaped piece of card (see picture above) and attaching string.
  • prayer- Names on hearts to show that God loves each one of us as much as the shepherd loved his lost sheep.  Click here for the full activity.
It just so happened that we only had a few 3-5s this Sunday but the activities went really well and the children showed a lot of care and maturity in helping the younger ones to learn and understand the story.  We're now going to try this once a term.  More to follow!!


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