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?

Here are some ideas for activities if you want to try out Messy Communion!  Our celebration section wasn't officially communion, but we talked about the last supper and shared some bread and wine in a very open and mToving way.  Here are the crafts and activities we did before the celebration started...  Last Supper Play dough mats.  Click  here  to print.  Memory game tray: study the tray, then remove an item and guess what's missing  Making toast (use a bread stamp to stamp a message on the bread first!)  Remember me jigsaws.  Click  here  to print, then laminate and cut up!  Making grape juice  Decorating special cups Easter Word Searches Bread and juice to share

Here's another play dough mat- this time to help children to reflect on the last supper.  It might also come in handy when helping children to understand what communion is about. Click here to print, then laminate if possible (to make it reusable!) then get the play dough out!  

Today we had classes from one of the local schools into church to do an 'Easter journey' of activities.  This is the activity we used to introduce the Last Supper and the children loved it (from the 5 year olds up to the 11 year olds!) First I collaged a picture and scanned it so it could be reproduced.  Then I printed some copies off, laminated them and cut each sheet into 10 pieces.  Click here if you want to print off the picture to make your own jigsaws. We gave each group of 3 children one of the jigsaws, before we said anything about what happened at the Last Supper and they worked together to put the puzzle together. When everyone had completed the puzzle, we asked them about the symbols they saw in the picture- bread, cup, heart- and the words.  They explained what they thought they were about and then this led onto telling the story.  They had so many ideas- especially about the symbolism of the heart!  A great conversation start...

Here's a preview of one of our crafts for Messy Easter in just over a week!  These are 'special cups' and reflect the drinking of wine at the Last Supper. We bought some plastic wine glasses from the pound shop (8 for £1, which we thought was a bargain!) and then decorated them with decor pens that will write on just about anything!  Here is our sample version... Looking forward to seeing what Messy Church goers come up with!

Today we looked again at a meal that Jesus shared with others.  The children hear the story of the last supper at least once a year when we look at the Easter story,  but conversation with the younger ones reveals that they don't always connect the communion service with this story, so we probably can't tell it often enough! Today we focussed on the theme of 'remembering', thinking about how Jesus used the meal as a way of asking his disciples to remember him. We started off with a memory game.  We put some items on a tray and asked the children to look and remember what was there.  In secret we then removed an item and asked them to guess what was missing.  Smaller items were much harder to remember! We then asked the children about really good things they could remember from their lives.  They drew or wrote their favourite memories on pieces of paper and then we put them all inside the treasure chest to symbolise how precious they were to us. ...