Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

As a previous post has looked at ways of exploring the story of Ruth with older children, I thought it was only fair to see how younger children might explore it through playful ideas! This is a great children's Bible with a good retelling of the story: As the children play, use the time to chat to them about what they've heard in the story... Explore themes of community and sticking together with the people we love using jigsaws and lego or duplo  Think about family, people we love and people who care for us with a collection of hearts  Think about journeys with old maps (and toy cars!) and act out the story with peg people  Make a game of collecting buttons to act out Ruth gleaning the wheat Use this craft  to continue exploring the idea of people we love and God loving and providing for us.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Ruth 1:16 Ruth is a great book to use to teach children about loyalty and faithfulness.  Ruth stays faithful to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and leaves her own community to join Naomi's.  Not only this, but she takes on a faithfulness to Naomi's God and becomes an ancestor of David- an amazingly important woman! There are so many themes to pick up here... welcoming new people into a family or community who takes care of us and who we take care of (and why we do this) what it means to become one of God's people how God works through unexpected people Here is a craft (inspired by this post on Scrapbooks etc ) to help pick up and explore the theme of the unity that comes from faithfulness to each other and to God: You will need: 4 strips of coloured paper (2 of one colour and 2 of another colour).  Mine were about 1cm thick and 15 cm long; glue. ...