Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

I've had some left over sand and plastic coins lurking around since holiday club and have finally decided to do something with them! This idea could be used for lots of things (memory verse words, for example, would work really well) but I'm using it for prayers to begin with. There are lots of things that we could say thank you to God for, but we often forget to do so, a bit like having treasure that we bury and forget about!  This activity helps us to remember to say thank you to God and also emphasizes the idea that the things and the people we have around us are precious like treasure. Get the children to draw on little stickers things they could say thanks to God for: people, animals, food, nature etc.  Stick the stickers onto plastic coins (you might need a bit of glue too, to make sure the stickers stay on!) and then hide them in a bucket of sand. Take it in turns to dig into the sand with your hand and pull out a coin.  Thank God for what is on the ...

As part of our holiday club session on shining like a light, I wanted to help the children to understand in a visual way how Paul and Silas helped bring the prison guard into the light by telling him about Jesus.  I'd been thinking about scratch art, where the darkness is scratched away to reveal the colour underneath and then I found how to make my own scratch art on Pinterest.  Click  here  to see how! So... it took a little bit of time, but as we only had about 25 children it wasn't too onerous.  I used oil pastels to make simple pictures of a cross on a coloured background (on credit card size pieces of card).  Wax crayons would work as well. Next I painted over each picture with a mixture of black paint with a little bit of washing up liquid mixed in. During the session, we gave each child a blacked out picture and a coin and they rubbed off the paint to reveal a coloured cross underneath.  They didn't know what would be underneath so...

Today at holiday club, one of our messages was about shining a light in the world,helping people to find out about Jesus and brightening their lives in some way.  We made a really easy craft to remember to be a lighthouse to others (we had a pirate theme to holiday club so the sea analogy really fitted!) and the children (and the adult helpers!) were thrilled by them.  The link for the original idea that we adapted can be found  here. You need: a polystyrene cup, a clear plastic cup, pens to decorate with, a battery operated tea light and some small blobs of blue tack. 1.  Decorate the polystyrene cup with the pens 2. stick the tea light to the top of the cup with a blob of blue tack. 3.  Put the clear plastic cup over the top and secure with another small blob of blue tack Blue tack is used so that it's easy to lift off the top cup and the tea light to switch the light on and off, but everything will generally stay in place when the light is on!...

When it comes to learning memory verses, anything that keeps the children actively involved is best!  One of the methods we use is to print out the verse, cut the paper into pieces and mix the pieces up.  The children then reassemble the jigsaw and read the verse.  If you want to keep the jigsaws long term, laminate them before cutting up!

As part of holiday club we told the story of the transfiguration and then talked about Jesus wanting to help us change our lives to be more like him. The children really loved the effect of this object lesson! You will need : old, dirty coins (preferably one each per child), a plastic container with a lid, 1 heaped tablespoon of salt and half a cup of vinegar (mixed and put into the lidded container), a container holding water, a container to hold the used salt/ vinegar mix. What we did We gave everyone a dirty 1p coin and talked about our lives sometimes being a bit like the coin, dirtied up by the wrong things we do that we wish we hadn't.  We said that, if we asked Jesus to help us, he could help us to become more like him and take away the dirt.  He could change our lives. We then asked the children to put all of their coins into the vinegar and salt mixture, closed the lid and shook the box.  Even as the children put the coins into the mix they started to ...

After hearing the story of Bartimaus, we discussed the fact that Jesus wanted to help us and that, like Bartimaus did, we could reach out and ask him. We asked the children to think of an area in their lives where they felt they needed some help.  They then drew around their hand to symbolise reaching out and, if they wanted to, wrote or drew inside what they wanted Jesus to help them with.  It was actually quite powerful and the children could have spent much longer on it!   Here are some examples:

This week we've had a fantastic holiday club! We have been using the 'On Your Marks' Scripture Union material and it was brilliant.  The children really understood the concept of being able to join Jesus' team and it made the whole message much easier to convey.  There was much sporting activity and running around, plus challenges and several bowls of rice pudding in leaders faces! On the last day, we abandoned the planned craft activity (making a boat) in order to experiment, as we have been doing at church, with letting the children explore their own response to what they'd heard.  Bearing in mind that 4/5 of the children were not from either of our churches, we were a bit worried about how it might go, but, as usual, the children really rose to the challenge of open ended response and it was fascinating to see what had stuck out to them. We had covered the stories of the calling of the disciples, Bartimaus, the transfiguration and Jesus walking on the water...