Thursday 30 May 2013

Lord's prayer bag for 3-5s

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

Prayer: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us
Play items: crosses and hearts
Jesus died because he loves us and so we could be forgiven and God wants us to love and forgive other people.

Prayer: Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
Play items: hard hat and hi vis jacket (things that help us to keep safe)
God helps us to keep safe and we can ask Him to help us to do the right thing

Wednesday 29 May 2013

Your Kingdom Come: crowns from foam sheets and pipecleaners

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 child's head!


Monday 27 May 2013

David cuts Saul's robe (a lesson with 3-5s)

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 containing water and glitter) and they took it in turns to shake the bottles and watch the glitter settle and we prayed that God would help us to calm down when we felt angry.  They were fascinated and I had to quickly make up another bottle for them to use during our play activities!
Our craft was paper tearing and sticking to represent the piece of robe that David cut off.  They spent ages on this!
Then we had some free play around the themes of the story...
  • playing with the reflection bottles
  • continuing with the paper tearing activity
  • Playing with capes and crowns

  •  hiding in the 'cave' we made from draping a play tent in fabric
The children especially loved the last two activities and kept taking it in turns to hide in the cave, creep out and mime cutting the robe of a resting 'king'.  The grown ups had to be constantly surprised kings!

As a take home activity, each child took away a copy of the story cube.  Print off a copy here.



Thursday 23 May 2013

Making prayer chatterboxes at lunchtime club!

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 :-)


Wednesday 22 May 2013

Saul and David story cube (1 Samuel 24)- Print out and make!

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.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Love your enemies memory verse game (Matthew 5:44)

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.





Sunday 19 May 2013

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.

Thursday 16 May 2013

Playing the patience game...

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 a ball to the other end of the string.  Decorate the cup!

To play, hold the cup upright and toss the ball into the air.  Try to catch the ball in the cup!  This game requires patience because it may take several attempts to catch the ball.  It also requires patience when making the game to thread string, tie knots and keep sellotape on the balls...The point is emphasized all round and it is also a lot of fun!

The children had a great time practically working with patience issues and we, as leaders were able to share times when God helped us to be patient :-)

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Keeping Promises (Matthew 5:33-37)

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 required cleaning up (thank goodness!)  We discussed that fact that, as Christians, it is sometimes hard work to follow what Jesus teaches us.

We looked in depth at the story of Hannah asking God for a child and giving Samuel back to God- a really hard promise for her to keep.  This provoked a lot of discussion about what the children would do in that situation.  We used our bag of odds and ends to create pictures to show their responses to the story and the teaching...


 A reflection of the word 'promise'
 This child explained that the pink heart was Hannah and the red heart was God.  The small heart was Samuel on a journey from his mother to God, but in both places he was loved.
 The hearts are promises and the bangles around them are protective barriers that can't be broken.  This child covered the picture with gauze and shells because they were shiny and this emphasized the special nature of promises.
 This child used her egg as Samuel to show that the promise was protected by love.
 This child made a heart out of mirrors to reflect God's promises to us and the bangles are our promises to God, reflecting that there is a two way process.
 This picture shows a person with a cross in their head and a person with a tick, illustrating that some people do the right thing and keep their promises and others don't.
This picture shows a 'nest' to protect the promises that are made.

Sunday 12 May 2013

Messy Pentecost talk and prayer: The Holy Spirit helps us

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 ourselves.  God sends the Holy Spirit to help us!

(Show empty dove pan) 

God can use us to do things we never thought we could do, if we trust him to help us.
 
When we make a cake we need ingredients: sprinkle some flour and salt in the pan. 

We then need to cook the cake and make it into something really special!  The cake can’t cook itself- it needs some help! 



(Set fire and open pan to reveal cake)
God can use us to do something really special too.  We have the ingredients inside us that He can use, we just need to let him use His power to help us!

Prayer response:

Here are some birthday cake candles.  Take a candle and come and put it on the cake. (When all the candles are on the cake, move the children back and light the candles).  Let’s remember the day of Pentecost and think of something we’d like The Holy Spirit to help us to do.  (Give a moment) Let’s say a big ‘Amen’ and then everybody blow as hard as you can from where you’re sitting.  (Say amen and blow out the candles).

Saturday 11 May 2013

Pentecost Messy Church Crafts

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.