Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Here's another play dough mat- this time to help children to reflect on the last supper.  It might also come in handy when helping children to understand what communion is about. Click here to print, then laminate if possible (to make it reusable!) then get the play dough out!  

Here's the first in the series of Easter Story Play dough mats.  Thanks so much to Lindsay for giving me this idea! There will be mats to help children play and explore with play dough the events of: Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, Gethsemane, The Crucifixion, The Burial of Jesus and The Resurrection.  This is the first: Palm Sunday! First click here and print off a copy.  If possible, laminate it so it can be cleaned and used again.  Now let the fun begin! Talk to the children about the events of palm Sunday, including the joy of the people to see Jesus and the hosannas they were calling out.  Let them use play dough to make smiling faces on the people and even more palm branches!

This is a fun idea to help children to think about praying for others to know Jesus and about how our behaviour as disciples can rub off on others. 1. Get a blank greetings card (or a piece of card folded over!) and draw a cross on the front.  Cut out the cross shape, making sure the fold remains in tact.   2. Open the cross up.  Colour one side of the card very thickly with crayons. Make it very colourful! Talk about the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, thinking about the forgiveness and the new life that he brings.  This is what the colour represents.  Talk about how when we have good news we want to share it with others so that they can be a part of it too.  Who do we know who we'd like to share in the forgiveness and new life that Jesus brings?  How could we behave so that some of what we know rubs off on them? 3. Fold over the card again so that the coloured section is inside.  Write on top of the cross the names of people you wo...

We had a session this weekend looking at the story of Jesus calling his disciples (Luke 5:1-11) and had a lot of fun.  Here's what we got up to! Acting out the story and then using craft items to make something that reflected the story (what the individual child liked or remembered most)  A fishing boat with more fish on the 'other side' of the boat  The fishing boat The face of Jesus Playing fishers of men 3-in-a-row with laminated fish and people shapes Praying for people who don't know about Jesus yet and asking that God will help us to be fishers of people like the disciples

This is a great idea my friend Simon used in a service last week.  It would work really well with 7-11s and is very tactile and visual! You will need a large world map (you can get these quite cheaply in some cheap book shops at the moment), scissors, pens. Before praying, cut the map into large pieces- enough for everyone to have a piece of their own. Give each child a piece of the map and get them to hold it in their hands.  Talk about how the world is damaged and destroyed by things that we do- environment, war, pollution.  Ask each child to pray for the part of the world they are holding.  They can pray silently, out loud or write/ draw their prayers on the map piece.   Now ask God to heal the world and bring the prayers to Him by reassembling the pieces of the map like a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Thank God for the world He has made and ask Him to bless it and us.

This is fair trade fortnight and on Friday we are gong into some schools to teach the children about fair trade, linking it to to Jesus' message of freedom and good news for the poor and oppressed (see Luke 4, where Jesus quotes Isaiah 61) and what Christians believe about behaving justly.  As a fun way in to thinking about fair trade and ideas of fairness in general, here's an easy game to play! You will need: A game sheet per child, dice (one per pair or 3 is good) Click here to print off a sheet with 2 game sheets on it, as below. Children work in pairs or 3s to throw the die, but have their own individual sheet to colour in. Children in a pair/ 3 take it in turns to throw the die.  Colour in a section of the Fair Trade symbol according to the number thrown.  Eg.  If you throw a 2, colour in a section with a 2 inside it.  If you throw a number , but have already coloured in all that number's sections, you will have to wait until your next throw! ...

I happened across a mini Jenga style stacking tower game in the pound shop the other day and couldn't resist using it for a prayer activity! Based on the four prayer points of thanks, blessing for others, healing and sorry, I printed out some words and pictures and glued them to the bricks.  Click here to get a printable version for mini bricks Click here to get a printable version normal size bricks Now you are ready to play the game! Stack the bricks in a tower.  Take it in turns to remove a brick and pray the prayer it is labelled with.  If you get a 'sorry' prayer, you don't have to pray out loud!  The game is over when the tower topples and the winner is the person with the most bricks at the end.