Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Beware that this story telling gets messy but the children absolutely love it! This is how we told the story of the good Samaritan in assembly today.  Thanks to Sarah for this genius idea and brilliant storytelling!  Start off by introducing the idea that bananas and oranges do not like each other and can be very mean to each other!  Stan is a happy banana but on the way to the shops one day he is set upon by other fruit, his money is stolen and Stan ends up squished and peeled on the side of the road (this is where is can get very messy, but the messier the better to make the point!)  A high and mighty lady banana comes along but is worried she will get dirty and she is just too important and busy to care about poor squished Stan so she carries on with her journey. Next, the banana mayor comes along and sees Stan but he is late for a meeting and is way too important to stop and help so he also goes on his way.  Stan is feeling a bit upset t...

Today we went into a new school to do an assembly.  Taking advantage of the fact that it is Halloween today, we thought we'd focus on All Saints day tomorrow and the Christian symbol of light in the darkness. We started by explaining how Halloween got its name from All Hallows Eve (the day before All Hallows/ All Saints) and then talked about how Saints were people who had made the world a better place and brought light to dark situations. We played a relay race with 2 volunteers First they hopped to a parachute, crawled under the parachute, and then hopped to a light at the finish line that they then held in the air.  The first to hold up the light was the winner. This symbolised the idea of how sometimes things in life could get scary and sad and feel dragged down (like going under the parachute) but there is light and hope at the end. Next we told the story of the good Samaritan with bananas and oranges (see separate post!) to illustrate how others could he...

I got my dates a little bit out of sync when I was planning the lessons this term, so we ended up with harvest a month late in Sparks!  Never mind- the children enjoyed it anyway! We told the creation story with our new  Creation story bag After the story, children tasted some different fruits, made some print paintings with pasta, and then chose from a selection of play activities: Play food and 'cooking' utensils  Books about nature and farming play dough with animal and people cutters. While playing, leaders had the chance to chat to the children about the story and all the things God has made in the world. We finished with a prayer, thanking God for all the things that grow.  Each child planted some cress seeds in a cup and we asked God to help us look after the things He has given us.

This is an idea I got from Pinterest and have adapted for our 8-11s.  It's turned into a bit of a 'must play' now because they love a challenge! A while back I realised that we needed to work on a bit of Bible familiarity as children were really unsure of where to look in the Bible to find a certain book.  So...  Plastic shot glasses can be bought from the pound shop, 40 for £1 and, as they're smaller than other cups, they don't take up so much space when you pack away! I used a permanent marker to write the names of each book on the bottom of each glass (along with a number to help with ordering the books when we reach that stage!)  Writing on the bottom, means that names can still be seen when cups are stacked. The first time we played, we let the children study the list of Old and New Testament books for 5 minutes and then set the cups out randomly and got them to sort the cups into Old and New Testament piles.  When they had finished, we counted up...

In our journey through the Old Testament this term, we have made it to David and Goliath.  We focussed this session on the idea of God doing amazing things and helping us when we trust him. After telling the story we decorated some stones, to remember how David used something so small to make such a big impact. Children then had lots of options to play around the themes of the story:   Using jigsaws and containers to explore big and small things...  ...and walking around on giant cardboard feet (they loved this!) The children could practice their throwing at the bean bag targets... ...and have a go with the paper ball catapults.  Click  here  to see the original idea. We also had a lovely fluffy sheep to play with! To finish, we prayed with a bubble sword.  The sword is a symbol of God's power to help us.  As the children popped the bubbles we asked God to help us be brave like David, and trust in Him.

By Catherine Ward Creche at our church is a pretty relaxed affair.  We plan five minutes of structure; sitting down together with some fruit and a song or a story, and, if our song or story lends itself to it, we link some of the toys we get out with what we've chosen. Other than that our focus is on creating an enabling environment for the children to explore and play in. We like simple open-ended materials, sensory play and mark making, some opportunities for big movements, some natural things to investigate and some simple role play cues. And we like books, we like books a lot. We have a mixture of different sorts of books, some about God and some about his wonderful world, some about toddlers' day, some about the very hungry Caterpillar and some about Wibbly Pig.  I've written before about the Stories Jesus Told series by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen and I've just recently found something equally fabulous. Susie Poole illustrates t...

You will need: Spinning tops (see  here  for our homemade version!) Sometimes when we get angry or sad we find it hard not to shout or hit or say something mean. Spin the spinning tops and watch them as they slow down and stop.  Ask God to help you slow down and stop when you are feeling angry.

You will need: Feathers Sometimes we can be rough in the way we talk to or touch others.  Touch the feathers and feel how gentle they are.  Ask God to give you more gentleness.

You will need: Sticks, jar or bottle to stand sticks in, ribbon If we are friends with someone we trust them to stick with us, even when it is hard.  Who do you trust to stick with you?  Who can trust you to stick with them?  Choose a stick and tie a ribbon on it and ask God to help you to stick with Him, even when it is hard.

You will need:  Dove pictures, pens, paper clips, string Is there part of your life that makes you feel stressed?  A dove is a sign of peace. Take a dove shape and write or draw on it the thing that stresses you.  Pin it to the line as a sign that you are asking God to bring you peace in that area.

Here is the prayer station we are going to use for 'patience'. Sometimes we can't do a job quickly.  We need to wait or to take our time so that the job is done well. Slowly put the jigsaw together and check everything is in the right place.  As you are doing it, speak to God in your head and ask him to help you have more patience in your life.

We're going to continue our 'kindness' theme in our mid week group by looking at the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. This will be quite a familiar story to our children, but I am interested in what their personal reflections are.  It's been a while since we used a word cloud, but here's the one I've made for this session As usual, I pasted the words of the passage into the  Tagxedo  word cloud creator, making an inverted image so that children can write or draw their reflections in the blank area after they have heard the story.  They can use the words as prompts or to help them to focus on what has struck them about the passage. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with! For a printable document of this word cloud, click  here

Here is our 'goodness' prayer station...   Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing and we need God to help us to make good choices.  Stick a piece of gold inside the person shape and ask God to help you to grow in goodness!

This Sunday we will be exploring the Fruit of the Spirit through different prayer stations.  The 5-11s have been working through the fruit during our regular Sunday sessions.  So far we are up to kindness but, as this Sunday is half term, we are taking a break from the usual routine and taking a brief look at everything! So far I have posted prayer stations for love and joy and I will post one for each of the fruit in the coming days.  Today, though, we have 'kindness'! You will need: A jar, a collection of cards (as above with the words 'say', 'help', 'give' or 'smile' written on them), a piece of poster paper split into quarters with each word written in a separate quarter. Take one of the cards from the jar.  Take it home and do that thing during the week.  Smile at someone you know help someone at home or school say something nice to someone give or share something with someone Write or draw what you did on the back a...

This is a bit out of sequence with the order of the fruit of the Spirit but I've been testing this out today and thought we'd make some prototypes at Powersource tonight! I've been making prayer stations for the Fruit of the Spirit.  When it got to self control, somehow I couldn't stop thinking about spinning tops that you just have to put your finger on to stop- a bit like God giving us self control to stop us spinning out of control when we get angry or upset.  I thought it would be good to set the tops spinning, think about times when we get angry, stop them and ask God to help us with self control in our lives.  I then saw how to make your own tops and thought we'd have a go instead of buying some! The original idea is  here , but I have adapted it! You will need: Blank CDs, marbles, permanent markers or paint pens, blu or white tack.  Decorate the shiny side of the CD with the markers.  Try to show something about your personality in the colo...

As last week's story with felt shapes went down so well at our lunchtime club, we thought we'd try again with a different story.  Because the children are not used to Bible language, we are trying to get the concepts across in a simple, but perhaps slightly unconventional way! Here is the story of the Good Samaritan told in terms of squares and triangles! You will need: A large square (colour 1), a large heart, 3 small squares (colour 2), 1 small square (colour 3), a triangle (colour 4) and a double sided square (I've used red one side, green the other).  You will also need 4 small hearts (3 of them stuck onto rectangles so they can be reversed and the hearts hidden.  You will also need a felt background!  The picture below shows what I mean...  Introduce the heart because this is a story about love.  Then bring in your double sided square.  One day a green square walks into town to do some shopping.  Out of nowhere he is attacked by ...

Here is our latest story at home bag.  In honour of Harvest, we have made a creation story bag! Contents include: Creation story touch and feel story book Play food 2 playmobil people A wooden heart (as a sign of God's love) Animal snap cards Star ribbon Felt sun Globe ball Soft toy duck and Zebra Blue fabric (sea) Playdough (can be used to make shapes of things children would like to thank God for) It will be available for parents to borrow in the next few weeks !

We had a great time yesterday in Sparks!  The children are really enjoying the time to play and respond around the theme of the story and we, as leaders, are able to get to know them a lot better by having time that is less directed. Here's what we did to tell the story of the walls of Jericho... First we all decorated some sheets of paper and rolled them into cones.  These were our trumpets for later! Then we built some walls with mega blocks and acted out the story with little playmobil people.  The children enjoyed moving their little person round and round the walls and then knocking them over! After that, to reinforce the story, we all marched 7 times round the carpet area, blew our paper trumpets and pretended to be the walls falling down. We played a game of 'do what I say', with all the children having to do the spoken action such as jumping or clapping.  They then took turns to choose the action.  This helped us to talk about Joshua d...