Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Here's a bag I've put together for Sunday's lesson on the Lord's prayer with our 3-5s.  Hopefully this will help them to understand a bit more about the parts of the prayer through play!  Explanations are quite simple, but are hopefully phrased in a way that will help this particular age group. Contents:  Globe, play food, crown, fuzzy felt crosses and hearts, wooden crosses, treasure box, hard hat and hi visibility jacket. This is how we can use the items to explain and play around the themes of the prayer... Prayer: Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name Play items: treasure box God is special and we need to treat him like something very precious. Prayer: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven Play items: crowns and globes God is king of the whole world and wants life on earth to be as amazing as life in heaven is. Prayer: Give us today our daily bread Play items: play food God gives us the things we need to live Pr...

This week our 3-5s will be looking at the Lord's prayer through play and exploration.  Our craft will be to make crowns to remind us that God is King over everything and that we are praying for his Kingdom to come on Earth.   Crowns are a well visited craft, so I was looking for something a little bit different!  It had to be easy to make, something the children would enjoy and, preferably, something that did not involve staples or anything too expensive. So I raided the craft supplies and this is what I came up with... (very colourful, easy to adjust and no staples!!)  Cut some crown shapes out of foam sheets Poke a hole each side of the crown shape and thread through some pipe cleaners.  Secure the pipe cleaners by twisting the ends onto the main part of the pipecleaner. Cut up left over parts of foam sheets and use to stick on and decorate the crowns... Use the pipe cleaners to form the back section of the crown and fit the crowns to each chi...

We had a great time yesterday looking at the story from 1 Samuel 24 where David cuts off part of Saul's robe.  We are looking at 'feelings' at the moment and used this story in the context of choosing not to get angry but asking God to help you do the right thing. To establish the idea of 'choosing' (David CHOSE not to kill Saul) we played a game.  I put 5 red balls and 1 blue ball in a bag.  Children closed their eyes, put their hand in the bag and chose a ball.  The person who chose the blue ball won.  For some reason they wanted to play this again and again! Next we acted out the story by hiding and creeping up on the 'king' and I cut off a piece of the cloak our 'king' was wearing.  We talked about how David might have been angry at Saul for trying to kill him, but he chose to not hurt anyone.  We then discussed how we feel when we are angry and how we can ask God to help us.  I showed the children some reflection bottles (bottles contai...

We noticed how much the children at our school lunchtime club enjoyed using the  prayer chatterboxes  that we had in our portable prayer box, so we decided that today we would let them make their own! We spoke about the spiritual fruit of Love and about how we can show love to others by praying for them- even people we don't like very much!  We then let the children choose people, places or things they wanted to pray about and gave them some blank chatterbox sheets to fill in.  Here are some examples... We then folded the chatterboxes and prayed/ played!  It's really exciting when you find something that engages children in prayer, maybe for the first time :-)

I know that I'm having a bit of a phase with cubes at the moment but this is going to be quite a fun take home activity for our 3-5s this week! This week, Sparks are learning the story from 1 Samuel 24 where David cuts off part of Saul's robe when they are in the cave.  In order to recap the story and to see which bits they remember most, I've made a story cube of the main events... The story is around the outside so that parents can familiarise themselves with it and retell the story.  Simply cut out the net and make up the cube (maybe print it onto card or laminate if you want it to endure, otherwise paper is fine!) and then throw the cube.  Ask the children what part of the story the face up picture shows and/ or get them to tell the story to you using the cube.  I love hearing children retell stories because you never know which part is going to appeal to them most! To print out a cube click here .

Here is the take home sheet for our 7-11s group this week.  We're looking this term at the sermon on the mount and this week the topic is love!  This is a game to help children to learn the memory verse. Written down, the rules seem complicated, but when you play the game it's easy to understand! Cut out the net and make the cube up.  Print out a copy  here . Play with a partner To start you must throw face 1 (the first part of the verse). Partner A throws the cube.  If they do not land on face 1, they will have to throw again on their next turn! Partner B then has a turn. The object of the game is to 'earn' each part of the verse in the correct order and to write it down.  After face 1, the task is to throw face 2 and then face 3 and so on.  Landing on face 5 after face 2, for example, does not count as this is not the correct order! The winner is the first person to write down the verse in the correct order.

As today is Pentecost we decided not to beat around the bush but to go straight ahead and tell the children about the gifts of the Spirit! It can be quite hard, even for adults, to get your head round all the gifts so I decided to limit our explanation to 10 of the gifts I thought were easiest to explain.  You may or may not agree with my selection or explanations but it was a great introduction to a huge topic! I made a sheet, detailing 10 Spiritual gifts: To print the sheet, click  here Then I photocopied the sheet times the number of children we expected and cut out the individual labels.  That made a lot of labels!  Next I mixed the labels up and distributed them around the room. After telling the children the Pentecost story, we asked the children to go and find all 10 different labels and come back.  When everyone had collected all they can we explained each one and gave short specific testimonies about healing, apostles, tongues and miracles....

Today we wanted to focus on the spiritual fruit of patience at our school lunchtime club.  This particular group (all girls!) respond most to doing something with their hands and chatting.  We're making it our mission just to build relationships and pass on something of our own experiences with God rather than teaching an all singing all dancing programme of activities! So... Today we had a little chat about what patience was and then we made some cup and ball games.  For those of you who don't know, this involves a ball attached to a string attached to a cup.  The aim is to get the ball into the cup by throwing it and trying to catch. Each person will need: a paper/ plastic cup, string (an adult arm's length), a ball (we used ball pond or ping pong balls) some sellotape and something to decorate the cup with. Make a small hole in the bottom of the cup and thread some string through.  Tie a knot at the end of the string just inside the cup.  Sellotape...

This term, our 5-11s are learning about what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount.  This week we got to the section on oaths or promises.  After some discussion, we focussed on verse 37- the part where people are told to let their yes be yes and their no be no!   To make the point about how easy we find it to break promises but how hard it is to keep them, I gave everyone an egg.  The children then had to play a running and jumping game holding their egg and continue caring for it until the end of the session.  This made the point that, in order to keep a promise and not break it, we had to take constant care!  In other words, don't say you will do something unless you are willing to go the distance with it and put in the effort.  I did give out raw eggs.  If you are less brave (or possibly much more sensible!) you might give the children hard boiled eggs.  We only had two cracks by the end of the session and only one of those requi...

It only seems fitting to use fire at Pentecost so how could we not?! After we had told the Pentecost story, our talk at Messy Church was about the Holy Spirit helping us to do things we might not be able to do by ourselves.  Here's a copy of the talk and prayer response with pictures.  You will need a dove pan to do this.  It might seem quite expensive but the amazement of the congregation when you use it (adults and children alike) is well worth it!  I've used mine about 10 times already in assemblies etc. Photos by David Duncan :-) Talk On the day of Pentecost 3000 people became Christians.  It was like the church’s birthday!  The Holy Spirit came to the disciples with wind and fire and helped them to do things they’d never been able to do before like speak other languages and have the courage to speak in front of crowds of people! Sometimes we feel like we can’t do things or we’d like to change but it’s really hard and we can’t do it our...

We had a brilliant morning at our Pentecost Messy church.  There was lots of fun and even some fire! Have a look at the crafts we did on the Pentecost theme.  All have a fire or wind related element... Flame headresses: ribbon, tissue paper, gold card, shiny red paper.  Kylé also has some fire streamers tucked into the ribbon for extra effect! Fire streamers made from crepe paper, lolly sticks and elastic bands.  Flame biscuits: digestives, white water icing and fondant flames.  Bubble and hoops that make noises when you move them (sounds a bit like a rattling wind!)  Birthday cards for the Church's birthday! Pentecost spinners!  Click here to print off.  Paint blowing pictures.  Windchimes: Cups, beads, bells, buttons and pipecleaners.  Holy Spirit suncatchers.  Click here for instructions.