Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

A few weeks ago, Kylé and I were invited to put on a Messy Church display table at the local Play Forum AGM (check out Nottingham Play Works here .  The idea was that we would visit the scrap store and use what we found to create crafts that we would use in a normal Messy Church session.  This was very exciting as we had no idea what there would be when we got there! We love the scrap store because, after paying our yearly membership fee of £5, it then costs us £1 for a basket of stuff and £5 for a trolley- amazing bargain!!  This time we went for a basket full.  This is what we ended up with: bottles, netting, bubble wrap, fabric, ribbon, vinyl sheets, card, cardboard cones, socks, stoppers, lids and various other odds and ends (see below!) After looking through what we had brought home, a water theme seemed to emerge.  We thought about stories such as Noah's Ark, Jonah, The calming of the storm, Jesus walking on the water and anything involving fishe...

Tanya and I have been really inspired by the idea of story bags to help tell Bible stories, but we knew that buying some in would be out of our price range.   So, as well as the prayer bag (see previous post), we are putting together some story bags for parents of our under 5s to take home and use as a way of helping the children to engage with a story. This is our first attempt and, when it's been labelled up, it will be ready to go!  Again, a lot of the stuff inside has come from the pound shop (we love it there!!) or from the toys and books we already have at church so it's not expensive! Inside this particular gift bag we have put: A story book, shiny blue fabric (sea) a playmobil man,  plastic fish, shells, instruments (to make the storm noises!), smiley and happy faces to help discuss the sad and happy times in the story, a plastic box for a boat (we couldn't find a toy boat that wasn't an ark, but I've put some parents on the case to find one!), an...