Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

I'm a believer in children never being too young to absorb aspects of faith, so I thought I would have a go at making a 'quiet' book out of felt that would introduce Christian symbols in a touchy feely way. While the title 'quiet' book always raises my eyebrows slightly because I like children being a bit noisy, I can understand why the soft nature of the felt lends itself to that title.  It definitely keeps the children occupied! Some of the tinier members of our congregation have enjoyed using the book and one elderly lady in particular was fascinated by it and I had to discreetly take it out of her hands! Don't be fooled.  This book is sewn and glued together in a very basic way because I don't have time for elaborateness! I'd love to see what other people come up with :-) Felt people attached to ribbon candles with flaps opened to reveal flames Unzipped heart containing felt people stuck to a length of ribbon A Cr...

So yesterday was Trinity Sunday and we bit the bullet and had a go at teaching about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (with as little heresy as possible!) We decided that the best way of proceeding was just to talk about the many different ways we relate to God and the many different ways that God relates to us, and to do this we gathered a collection of symbols.  The idea was that the children could pick a symbol and describe what they thought it meant in relation to what they know about God and the three persons of the Trinity.  There were no wrong answers!  It helped that Pentecost had been the week before, so Holy Spirit symbols were still fresh in their minds.   Our basket of symbols contained: a cup play bread rainbow ribbons 'fire' streamers 'water' streamers a bottle of water, a battery operated tea light felt flames wooden people  a globe ball a windmill a cross a dove hearts (including a heart with arms- thank you IKEA!) ...

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Hand in Hand Conference in Eastbourne and really enjoyed helping to lead the 'Hands On' stream with Victoria from GodVenture .  We really wanted to give leaders lots of ideas to help children explore and experiment with their responses to Bible stories and in prayer.  What better way to do that then to get the leaders exploring and experimenting for themselves?! This was one of my favourite activities set up by Victoria and is such an easy but effective way of helping children to respond to Bible stories with freedom. You will need: Old picture frames, 'bits and pieces' e.g. lolly sticks, match sticks, leaves, glass pebbles, stones, pine cones, ribbons, an old sheet (optional) Lay out the empty picture frames on the sheet and arrange your different objects and pieces into open containers. Tell a Bible story and then ask the children to use the objects to make their own picture response either inside or outside a fr...