"Who Am I?" story recap game

This is a good game to play to help children recap on key characters and events in a story…

Seal an envelope.  When sealed, cut into strips and tape shut one long edge of each strip.  This will leave you with some little pockets.

Attach the pockets to lengths of ribbon (I used glue dots as they’re quite strong and not messy!)

You have now made some head bands to place story cards into. 

Let children know that the cards for this game all have pictures that relate to a character or object from the story you have been covering.  Children all put on a headband and the leader slots one of the cards into each headband pocket.  Children wearing the headband will not be able to see the card that they have, but the others will.  They can then ask the others yes/no questions to try and figure out who or what their card shows based on what they remember of the story e.g. “Am I a human?”, “do I have wings?”.  Take it in turns to ask questions and the first person to guess who they are wins!

As an example, these are cards I made for the Noah’s Ark story with basic clipart.

Other ideas:

Jonah: Jonah, sea, big fish, sailors, boat, storm clouds, tree

Creation: sun, moon, stars, night sky, sea, fish, humans, animals, land, trees, plants, light

Nativity: Mary, Joseph, Wise men, shepherds, sheep, gifts, angel, stable, star, baby

Easter: donkey, palm leaves, bread, wine, nails, cross, tears, cave, angel, sunrise

Responding to the Bible: Feelings cards

This is an idea to help children to communicate their response to a story.  It's absolutely fascinating to find out what children really think about what they hear and, while some children can easily tell you what they think, some find it more difficult.  Knowing what children feel about a story or helping them to explore what people in the story might be feeling is a great way to open up discussion and also helps to check their understanding.  More often than not, they come up with something we adults would never have thought of!

The cards are really easy to use.  Print them out (click here) and cut them up.  When you have told a story, spread them out and let the children choose cards that show either how they feel about certain points in the story or how specific characters might feel.  I'm sure that the children will come up with even more feeling words, but hopefully this will be a starting point for discussion!

God's love for us:prayer and craft activity

I've been away for a while moving house but now I am back online!

Here is a colourful activity to help children celebrate God's love for us and for others and to help them think about how this love links us together.

I found a tutorial here for a chain of hearts craft and it made me think of how we could use the idea with children...

Cut out several coloured hearts of the same size.  

 Fold the hearts in half and cut out the middle sections- you can discard these or use them for something else!

 Open out the hearts

 Make a cut, like so, at the side of each heart.

 Link the hearts together by overlapping the cut edges and gluing them (a bit like making a paper chain).

 Attach a piece of ribbon to one of the end hearts and hang on a door knob!

Things to talk about and use for prayer...

• talk about God's love for everyone and how He wants us to show love to others
• Children could write names of people on the hearts who they would like to know God's love 
• Children could write names of family members/ friends on the hearts or choose a different colour to represent each person and pray that they will experience God's love in the coming week
• Children could write on the hearts things that God has made or done that show how much he loves us/ them in particular (especially any answered prayers!)
• the different coloured hearts show that we are all different, but we are all joined together by the fact that God loves us!

Nothing is impossible to God puzzle

It's great to tie the teaching in with an interactive game if at all possible and here's a game that helps to make a point!

I was thinking about the story of Abraham and Sarah and their puzzlement at the idea that God would give them a baby when they were so old.  This idea came to me.  It helps to illustrate the point that we, as humans, have difficulty understanding God's plan sometimes and don't know how to put the pieces together.  God has the solution though and what we find tricky is not hard to Him.

I've made up two sheets- one showing the solution and Bible verse from when Jacob has 3 visitors who tell him about the baby and one with some pentominoes to cut out and fit together.  I loved this activity when I was teaching!

Get the children to cut out the pentominoes and fit them together to try to make a large rectangle (a blank rectangle is also included).  If the children want to they could colour the pentominoes to make each shape more distinguishable.  This is a really hard puzzle and I would imagine that none of the children will be able to do it in 10 minutes!

After 10 minutes or so of trying, gather the children together and show them the coloured solution.  Perhaps they can then use it to put their pieces together correctly.

Talk about the fact that it was very hard to solve the puzzle and might have seemed impossible, but there was a solution.  Link this to the idea that God knows the solution to all the hard puzzles we have to solve in life, and what might seem difficult to us is not difficult to Him

To print off the puzzle sheets and solution, click here.