Exploring the gifts of the Spirit with 5-11s!

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.  The children had lots of questions!

We then prayed and asked God to speak to the children about the gifts He wanted to give them.  The children then chose two or three of the gifts they'd like to pray for and we made gift bags.

The bags were simply made by sticking together an envelope, cutting off the top to make an opening and fixing a ribbon to the opening to make a handle.

Children stuck on the labels for the gifts they were praying for and then made some more decorations...

It was great that they didn't copy each other in choosing gifts!  The younger children needed a bit of support but were well able to choose :-)

Finally we put all of the gift bags in the centre, gave each child a lit birthday cake candle (symbolising the Pentecost flames) and asked The Holy Spirit to fill us with these gifts and help us to do the things we couldn't do by ourselves.