Sunday 30 June 2013

Fruit of the Spirit: God's Goodness Collages

The main objective of our school lunchtime club is to form relationships with the children and to open up discussion about God with them in a natural way.  This seems to happen best when everyone is busy doing something creative!

Last week we got to the end of our focus on the fruit of the spirit by looking at 'goodness'- we weren't doing them in order and this just happened to come last, probably because it's the hardest to explain!

Sarah hit upon the idea of focussing on what we thought was 'good' about the character of God and then helping the children to relate this to how we should behave ourselves.  In order to do this we decided to let the children make collages of their ideas...

We used paper plates as a base and a variety of papers.  Here's what the children came up with!

An expression of God's love and his goodness to us.  The child who made this, then was prompted to go and give it to her teacher as a gift!

This picture shows God's love, His creativity for making the world and the things in it and His generosity in giving it to us.

 This picture shows a heart for God's love, a 'smile' because God is joyful and happy and a 'halo' above because God does good and kind things.

 The taller person is God, helping the smaller person to walk.  God is good because He helps us.

This child really wanted to express God's happiness.  In her mind, goodness was linked to happiness!

Thursday 27 June 2013

God's love for us: Blessing craft

I found a really easy way to make origami hearts on Pinterest the other day (click here) and it struck me that, not only could older children make them easily, but we could also use them to think about God's love for us.

First of all, here's how to make the hearts.  You need a square of paper and I'm not good at writing instructions for origami, so hopefully the pictures will be enough!

 Fold into thirds




Turn over and fold the back piece down.
 Fold the edges in.
 Children could make these hearts and discuss loving our neighbours as ourselves, or talk about God's love for us.  To make an extra point about God's love for us, you can insert some handwritten blessing verses (I used Jeremiah 29:11 below) and children can either keep them for themselves or make and give them to others.
 Another idea is to use matchboxes as little blessing boxes.  Concertina up a Bible verse and stick the first section of it to the inside tray of a matchbox.  The verse can then be unfolded when the box is opened.
 Put the box together and stick an origami heart on the top as a reminder that we have the blessing because God loves us!

Monday 24 June 2013

Jesus heals the 10 Lepers story with a change bag!

On Wednesday we have a thanksgiving service at school and my job is to tell the story.  We're going to look at the importance of remembering to say sorry by using the story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers.  As usual, the story needs to be as visual and interesting as possible.  I thought about it for quite a while and came up with various scenarios including the use of rubber gloves, but this is what I decided on in the end...

You need a chain of 10 'lepers' made from sticky backed contact paper with white sticky dots randomly stuck onto it (I happened to have red in the cupboard, but any colour will do!)

Use them to tell the beginning of the story when the group of lepers see Jesus and call out to him to have pity on them.
 Jesus sends them away to see the priests and as they go they are healed.  At this point, pull the sticky side away from the backing paper and dispose of it (leaving the paper behind as the 'healed' lepers.
Put the 'healed lepers into the change bag to show that they have 'gone'.

As you are speaking about this, flick the switch of the change bag but make sure you aren't seen!
From the now released second compartment, pull out a prepared single man shape and talk about the Samaritan who came back to thank Jesus.
Turn the change bag inside out to illustrate that none of the other lepers came back to say thank you!
As Jesus commends the Samaritan for appreciating what has happened enough to come and say thank you, turn the man shape over to reveal a gold side.  Saying thank you brought him an even greater blessing because he came into contact with the giver!

You can then build on the story to discuss how it feels when people do or do not say thank you to us and ask how God must feel...

Saturday 22 June 2013

Quick and easy wearable armour of God

This week we need some armour of God for the Sunday morning service so I decided to make some...

As with anything, I tried to make it as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible without neglecting the finished presentation!

All in all, the armour cost less than £5 to make because we had some ribbon in our stores already.  If we had had to buy the ribbon it would have been just slightly more expensive!  I spent about an hour making it so it's pretty quick too.

I used: flip flops, foam sword, foil food platter (all from the pound shop), 1 1/2 large sheets of gold card, gold ribbon, glue dots, paint pens, stapler

I wanted each piece of the armour not only to be labelled according to Ephesians 6, but also to have a scriptural reference that would help to explain its function.  I have included verse references with the details below.

Shoes of the Gospel of Peace:
Remove straps from flip flops and place strips of glue dots on the soles.
 Stick lengths of ribbon to the glue dots to make straps for tying round the feet.
 Cut gold card to fit the soles and decorate like so.

Belt of Truth
Cut a length of ribbon that will comfortably tie round your waist.  Staple 5 pieces of card to the belt and write 'TRUTH' on them.  I used John 14:6 as the verse here (see top picture above)

Breastplate of Righteousness
Cut two pieces of card to make a front and back piece.  Join them with lengths of ribbon as shoulder straps.
Staple more ribbon to the sides of each card piece as side ties.  Write RIGHTEOUSNESS on the front piece.  I also added a heart with Proverbs 4:23 written inside it.

Helmet of Salvation
Use strips of card to make a helmet as above.  Stick a cross to the front to emphasise that the helmet is about salvation.  I also wrote John 3:16 across the helmet.

Shield of Faith
I stapled some ribbon to the back of a foil food platter to make a handle and then stuck a gold card cross on the front with the word FAITH and a verse about trusting God (Psalm 145:13)

Sword of the Spirit
I wound some gold ribbon round the foam sword (to keep with my gold theme!) and then stuck some Gold card to it (see top picture).  One side reads 'SPIRIT: the word of God' and on the other side of the sword is written the verse from James 4:7.

I can't wait to see the armour in action and hopefully it will last us some time!



Tuesday 18 June 2013

Jesus sudoku puzzle to print and play!

For those children who think logically and mathematically, here's a game that will exercise their brains, but also help them to explore and remember ideas about Jesus!

I found an idea about colour sudoku for children and it made me think about how I could adapt it for church.  I've started off with an easier version that works on 4 sets of 4 squares.  For ease of identification each block of squares is colour coded.  The pictures I have chosen (and ideas for discussion around them) are: 

  • Crown- Jesus is king, our leader
  • Cross- salvation, crucifixion/ resourrection, sacrifice, new life
  • Heart- Jesus' love for us, loving others because he loves us
  • bread and wine- Last supper/ communion and the meaning of each item


Print out the puzzle sheet (click here) and cut out the grid and each individual picture square.  If you want to keep the puzzle more long term, it's probably a good idea to laminate it.
Now arrange the pictures so that each one of them appears once in
  • each of the coloured blocks
  • each column
  • each row

 Here is a possible solution to the puzzle!

Sunday 16 June 2013

Fruit of the Spirit Kindness Craft: Friendship Bracelets

Yesterday, we were thinking about one of our mission partners in South Sudan and the children she works with.  We wanted to make something as a gift to show the children there that we were thinking of them: something that would somehow show a link between us.  We ended up making some friendship bracelets to send to them.

While this was a specific craft to show friendship, it opens up conversation about kindness and showing people that you care about them by doing something for them- kindness seems, after all, to be about showing care for others.  It would be a great craft if you were thinking about kindness as one of the fruit of the Spirit because it's easy and it involves connecting things together (beads, wool, pipe cleaners) to show that we are linked to other people by kind acts that we do for them or they do for us.

We made the bracelets by choosing a pipe cleaner and...

...threading Hama beads onto them in various patterns
 ...winding different coloured wool round them
 ...plaiting or winding other pipe cleaners round them

As you can see there are many variations on the theme!!

To wear the bracelets, simply wind around wrist to the desired size and then wind ends round the main part of the bracelet to make a circle shape.

If there is time and you have the resources children might be able to make one for themselves and one to give away.  That way they do something kind by giving a gift and also keep a reminder that kindness links us together with other people.

Saturday 15 June 2013

Paper globes: Who is God?

At the moment, I'm having a bit of a spree of finding ideas and then adapting them for use with the children!  I found this one here. This is a great thing to do with your most able crafters amongst the children.   Our 11 year olds had no problem, but the rest of us worked together to make a joint effort!

Each globe has 20 faces and I challenged the children to think of 20 different words (either as a group or individually) to describe God, each of which we would write on the faces.

The globes look beautiful when finished, especially if you have time to decorate them, and it was an interesting challenge to think of enough attributes of God to fill each face without repetition!  We're now going to hang these in the room we use on a Sunday to remind children of the amazing character of God!

Once you know how, the globes are quite easy to make...

To make the globes you will need 20 circles, each with an equilateral triangle inside it.  I've made a template sheet, which has 10 circles/ triangles on it, so if you want to use it, print out 2 sheets!  Print the sheet here.

Cut 20 circles out.
Fold along the straight lines (I prefer to fold so that the lines end up on the outside).  This will give you 20 triangles with tabs that stick up.
Glue the triangles together by the flaps so that you have two sets of 5 and a long strip of 10 as shown in the picture below. 
 Turn one set of 5 upside down...
 ...and use the tabs to glue the long strip to it.


Now add the second set of 5 to the top, again using the tabs.

If you want to do what we did, write words to describe God on each face and decorate!



Friday 14 June 2013

Discipleship sandal craft

Yesterday I was working with one of our children on communion preparation.  Part of what we talked about was discipleship of Jesus.  If we wanted to follow him, how could we show that in our everyday lives?  

I wanted to get across the idea of following being an active thing so we made a sandal (or flip flop!) of ideas!  I found this craft on Pinterest here, but we put a discipleship slant on it!


Cut out a flip flip shape from card and make 3 holes like so...
Put a pipe cleaner underneath the flip flop shape and thread one end through hole A and one end through hole B.

We chose people we would try to remember to pray for and then chose a button to represent each person, threading the buttons onto the pipe cleaner ends.  We then threaded both ends through hole C to make the flip flop strap and secured them underneath.



Now we discussed things we could do (achievable things!) that would reflect the fact that we were trying to live out what Jesus taught and write them on the flip flop as a reminder.  These included...

  • Think about God at school,
  • respect my friends
  • listen to my dad
  • read a bible story once a week
  • pray