Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

 This week's lectionary has a variety of stories to choose from, but we will be looking at the old testament reading: the story of God putting a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his promise never to flood the earth again.  Some parts of the story of Noah's ark can be quite upsetting, and can inspire big questions about life, God's power and the consequences of doing wrong things. In the background, however, is the overarching story of listening to God, rescue, new beginnings, and God's promise to be with us. As the story ends, we have the powerful symbol of the rainbow stretched across the sky as a sign of God's life-giving love for us and his creation, and his promise never to send a flood again.  This week's play dough mat is an invitation to explore this part of the story and also to think about what promises mean. What is a promise? What does it mean to make a promise? What does God promise and what do God's people promise Him in return? How does it feel ...

The rainbow is a great symbol for Christians of God's love and promise to us.  It's also the symbol of new beginnings- a key message of Christianity.  This activity helps children to think about their own ability to share God's love with others and to pray for those who don't yet know that love.  Plus it's pretty amazing to watch over time! You will need: 6 clear cups, water, food colouring in red, yellow and blue, 6 sheets of absorbent kitchen roll Fill 3 of the cups half full with coloured water and arrange with the three unfilled cups like so: Fold the kitchen roll in half lengthways and then double it over again. Place the end of each piece of kitchen roll in one of the cups of water and the other end in an empty cup, so that it looks like this: Wait! The water will start to climb the paper and pass into the empty cup where it will mix with the water from the next cup but one, which will also be transferring over... Your empty...

This is a good game to play to help children recap on key characters and events in a story… Seal an envelope.  When sealed, cut into strips and tape shut one long edge of each strip.  This will leave you with some little pockets. Attach the pockets to lengths of ribbon (I used glue dots as they’re quite strong and not messy!) You have now made some head bands to place story cards into.  Let children know that the cards for this game all have pictures that relate to a character or object from the story you have been covering.  Children all put on a headband and the leader slots one of the cards into each headband pocket.  Children wearing the headband will not be able to see the card that they have, but the others will.  They can then ask the others yes/no questions to try and figure out who or what their card shows based on what they remember of the story e.g. “Am I a human?”, “do I have wings?”.  Take it in turns to ask questions ...

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...

I was looking round the pound shop this week and came across a section of garden trellises.  For £1 you could get a trellis that expands to almost 1m x 2m and I couldn't resist getting one! I'd got hold of some different coloured ribbon from the scrapstore and was going to make something rainbow/ Noah's ark related with it so the trellis actually comes in quite handy. This is an idea that most ages can use because it's really simple, though younger children might need help with tying...  Have a selection of ribbons of different colours available.  Children choose a ribbon, thank God for something of that colour (e.g. green plants, red strawberries) and then tie their ribbon to the trellis wherever they want to.  Eventually the whole trellis will be covered in colour!   You can even push the trellis back together again for easy storage and transportation.  If you don't have a trellis, any kind of mesh would do and then, when you weren't using it, y...

We love helping the younger children to engage with a story through play and exploration and today we looked at Noah's Ark! We told the story using the contents of the  Noah Story Bag   Then there were various options the children could choose from to re-enforce the story... Playing with the wooden Noah's ark Making animal masks Playing animal snap Water play with items from the story bag. Perhaps the children got a little bit wet, but they had fun doing it!! During the time given to play, leaders had a chance to speak to the children about the story and observe how the children linked what they were doing to what they had heard.   To finish, there was a short prayer time.  The theme we were looking at was 'God takes care of us'.  Noah is a tricky story for this age group because mixed up in it is the idea of an angry God wiping everyone out!  However, we chose to think about how God looked after Noah's family a...

Today in Sparklers we had a go at mess free painting and made some rainbow pictures!  Click here  to find the Pinterest post I got the idea from!  This would be ideal for a lesson on Noah's ark and I might try it out next term in Sparks.  This is what we did... Squirt some paint onto some card (not too much!) Put the painty card into resealable sandwich bags and close them.  We then laid them out on a mat for the children to access easily as they wanted. Squidge the paint over the card by pressing on top of the bag. Carefully remove the card from the bag when you've had enough squidging! Hang the pictures up to dry!

Here is one of our new story bags!  This one helps parents to tell the story of Noah at home. Contents: 2 Noah Story Board Books A bowl for water which can then be turned upside down to make a mountain A plastic tree to represent 'dry land' pairs of foam animals bubbles (for water fun!) A Noah stick puppet sad and happy faces to discuss sad and happy time in the story a jug for pouring water when it 'rains' a 'boat' This would be a good story to do in the bath as most of the items are waterproof!

Last week at Tots we tried out one of the new story bags we are putting together and told the story of Noah's ark.  Have a look at what we did! Noah and his Ark Lining up the animals to go on the ark Animals in the ark The rain starts to fall! Back on dry land... Rainbow biscuits-  click  here  to make! We are hoping that the bag will be useful to tell a bathtime story!

Here's an activity we tried in TOTs after telling the story of Noah's Ark.  It's a simple craft and, yet again, includes biscuits- always a winner! Biscuit Runny Icing Fondant icing rainbow shape More runny icing! Smarties!