Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Another activity this week, looking at the theme of Love your Neighbour, was this reflective colouring sheet.   If you'd like to download and print the sheet,  click here   and let me know how you get on! Think about Who is your neighbour? What does it mean to be a neighbour? How might you show love to others, especially those who are different to you?

Yesterday we were thinking about the theme of 'love your neighbour', and made these paper people circles as a symbol of all being joined together in the community. You will need: print out of the 'love your neighbour' sheet or paper, pencil and scissors Option 1-Download the printable sheet and cut the circle of people out Option 2-Download the printable and fold it into eighths.  Cut along the marked edges of the front eighth and open up to show your circle Option 3-Cut out a paper circle and fold it into eighths.  Draw the half people shapes on the front eighth (as shown below) and cut!

You will need : cooking or baby oil, food colouring and water, jam jars with labels removed or clear plastic bottles and lids/ tops Mix food colouring into the water and fill each jar or bottle with a ratio of roughly 1/3 oil/  2/3 coloured water.  The oil will settle on top of the water. Observe the fact that the water and the oil do not mix- just like the Jewish people and the Samaritans in the time of Jesus.  Put the lid/top very tightly on the jar or bottle and gently shake it. Watch the oil and the water droplets create swirls and patterns as they separate out again. The two substances have worked together to create something quite mesmerising and beautiful.  Think about what happens when the Samaritan reaches out to help someone he wouldn’t usually mix with.  How might that work in our own lives and communities?

We hold a monthly Ecumenical Messy Church in the local parish hall- the Church of England, the Methodist Church and the Church of Christ working together, pooling our resources and building relationships! Messy Church has proved to be really popular with our local non-church families and this month we explored the story of the Good Samaritan. Here's what we got up to... 'Plaster' biscuits (biscuits, fondant and strawberry jam!) Wool friendship bracelets Playing with a toy doctor's kit and lots of bandages! Pin the Good samaritan on the donkey Thinking about people we have helped and those who have helped us Colouring and acting out the story with stick puppets We then told the story with oranges and bananas  (check out the link here )... ...and then ended by thanking God for the people who help us and sticking plasters to ourselves to remind us to be people who help others :-)

Here is the bag I've put together to help tell and play the story of the Good Samaritan.  Again, it's all easy to get hold of and quite cheap! Contents: Story book old map (to help children relate to the idea of going on a journey) flip flops (again, putting on shoes to go on a journey) toy doctor's kit and bandages (pound shop purchases!) little bag containing card coins (The Samaritan paying for the injured man's care) 5 faces-one friendly (Samaritan), 3 cross/ unfriendly looking (people who walk on the other side), 1 doublesided face with a sad, injured face on one side and a happy, healed face on the other side.

Here is the take home sheet we gave out as part of our Good Samaritan lesson this week, encouraging children to look out for and help others! For a printable version, click  here .

Beware that this story telling gets messy but the children absolutely love it! This is how we told the story of the good Samaritan in assembly today.  Thanks to Sarah for this genius idea and brilliant storytelling!  Start off by introducing the idea that bananas and oranges do not like each other and can be very mean to each other!  Stan is a happy banana but on the way to the shops one day he is set upon by other fruit, his money is stolen and Stan ends up squished and peeled on the side of the road (this is where is can get very messy, but the messier the better to make the point!)  A high and mighty lady banana comes along but is worried she will get dirty and she is just too important and busy to care about poor squished Stan so she carries on with her journey. Next, the banana mayor comes along and sees Stan but he is late for a meeting and is way too important to stop and help so he also goes on his way.  Stan is feeling a bit upset t...

We're going to continue our 'kindness' theme in our mid week group by looking at the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. This will be quite a familiar story to our children, but I am interested in what their personal reflections are.  It's been a while since we used a word cloud, but here's the one I've made for this session As usual, I pasted the words of the passage into the  Tagxedo  word cloud creator, making an inverted image so that children can write or draw their reflections in the blank area after they have heard the story.  They can use the words as prompts or to help them to focus on what has struck them about the passage. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with! For a printable document of this word cloud, click  here

As last week's story with felt shapes went down so well at our lunchtime club, we thought we'd try again with a different story.  Because the children are not used to Bible language, we are trying to get the concepts across in a simple, but perhaps slightly unconventional way! Here is the story of the Good Samaritan told in terms of squares and triangles! You will need: A large square (colour 1), a large heart, 3 small squares (colour 2), 1 small square (colour 3), a triangle (colour 4) and a double sided square (I've used red one side, green the other).  You will also need 4 small hearts (3 of them stuck onto rectangles so they can be reversed and the hearts hidden.  You will also need a felt background!  The picture below shows what I mean...  Introduce the heart because this is a story about love.  Then bring in your double sided square.  One day a green square walks into town to do some shopping.  Out of nowhere he is attacked by ...