Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Story Cubes are a great way of both telling and recalling parts of a story. With this cube, tell the story of Holy Week and then throw the cube to remember individual events. There are 2 versions- a colour your own page and a page that is already coloured and labelled. Use one or both! Click here to download and print. Think about all of the things that happen- Palm Sunday, Last supper, Garden of Gethsemane, Crucifixion, Burial in the tomb and resurrection and wonder about them. I wonder... ...which part of the story is your favourite? ...which part of the story makes you ask a question? ...where you are in this story?

  I love investigating what is going on generally in the creative world and I've recently been massively inspired by the work of Anna Bruder at A Line Art - particularly her recent work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to see all about that! It struck me that bringing colour to black and white flowers was a really powerful symbol of the new life of Easter Day, so that's what we will be doing in our Easter day service. My plan is to give everyone who comes a flower and to invite them, at any point in the service to come and fill the flower with colour at one of our craft tables. We'll then use them at the end of the service as a symbol of the new life of the resurrection and create a flower garden. This works particularly well if you are using the passage from John's gospel where Jesus is mistaken for the gardener. Here's a quick how to: Print some flower shapes onto card (if you want to use mine, click here ). Stick the flower head to a paper st...

Celebrate the new life of resurrection with this butterfly craft. You will need: two squares of coloured paper (one smaller than the other), string. Easter Egg Prayers Easter Day colouring sheet Easter Day Play Dough Mats

Here are some prayers you could use in a group, a family or even in a whole congregation if you have enough chocolate to go round!  The prayers are very simple and help to pick up themes of the Easter story. You will need: a hollow chocolate Easter egg per group Show the children the unbroken egg (if it comes in two halves, you may need to hold them together!) Relate the closed egg to the tomb where Jesus' friends put his body after he had died.  Talk about what it feels like when we are left on our own, one of our friends goes away or someone we know dies. Ask God to help everyone who is sad, upset or lonely or who has lost someone that they love. Now break the egg into pieces and reveal the hollow inside! When Jesus died it was not the end of the story- he rose to new life and was no longer inside the tomb.  Something amazing had happened!  Talk about where in life the children would like a chance to start again- maybe with someone they have ha...

Here is a reflective colouring sheet for Easter day.  I'm posting it a few days early so I apologise to those who are still burying the Alleluias!  Click here to print off the sheet. Happy Easter when it arrives!

Here are the final two play dough mats for the Easter Story.  Click here  For the 'In the tomb' play dough mat. Click  here  for the 'He is risen' play dough mat. Print out, laminate and get started with the play dough!

This Easter Sunday we had a fantastic visual symbol of the new life Jesus brings to us.  It's a great all-age idea because everyone can join in! We have a wooden cross which has been covered in chicken wire.  All day on Good Friday, the cross stood outside church in its bare wooden state.  On Easter Sunday morning we put it outside church again but this time, as people came into the church they were invited to put a flower into the chicken wire.  The flowers soon covered the cross as a witness to the new life of Easter Sunday.  This was a brilliant object lesson for the children because it was so visually accessible and they could easily take part! Starting to fill the flower cross!

Butterflies are great symbols of new life when you are talking about the resurrection.  These are really easy and really effective to make- but are probably best made by older children as the folding can be a bit fiddly! First get a brightly coloured page from a magazine, Then cut it into 2 squares- I used one 12 x12 cm and one 8cm x 8cm Starting with a corner, concertina the paper diagonally Tie the two concertinaed squares together with thread  Hang the butterflies up!

We did this last year at Messy Church and when I got the Easter box down this week I found we had loads of stuff left so we did it at the school lunchtime club.  Nice and easy to make!  You need some A5 size card, folded in half, a square of blue paper smaller than the card size, an orange circle, a smaller yellow circle , a brown cross and 2 labels- one saying 'He is alive!' and one saying 'Happy Easter'. Stick the blue square on the folded card, Glue on the orange circle and glue the yellow circle on top. Stick on the green hill and the cross and then one of the labels- stick the other label inside!

You will need:  Pens, butterfly outlines, string, hole punch to make holes for string, somewhere to hang the butterflies! Resurrection 3 days after he died, Jesus rose to new life! Christians believe that Jesus brings us hope and new life. What are your hopes and dreams?  Where in your life would you like a new start? Write or draw your ideas on a butterfly shape and hang it up.

Thinking about the approach of Easter, I thought I'd post this prayer that we used last year.  The only fiddly bit is making up little packets so that each child has one smartie of each colour.  The children loved it, but make sure the younger ones remember to eat the colours as you say them or they'll have nothing left within 5 seconds! Say each line and eat a Smartie of the appropriate colour: Pink for the people who came and praised, Green for the palm leaves that they raised; Purple for the robe that Jesus wore, Brown for the cross that Jesus bore; Red for the blood that Jesus shed, Blue for the tears when he was dead; orange for the stone that was rolled away, Yellow for joy- He's alive today!