Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Today we continued our look at the fruit of the Spirit in our school lunchtime club by looking at self control... We tried a game to start that involved marbles and cut up paper towel tubes.  Each child had a long u-shaped piece of tube.  Children stood in team lines and the idea was that they passed a marble from one end of the line to the other using only their piece of tube.  No one was allowed to touch their tube piece to another tube piece until they actually had possession of the marble!  If the marble fell it had to go back to the start of the line again.  We did this as a race between teams and it was hard but fun! After the game we used it to discuss the fact that they needed to try to keep the marble under control and, if they lost control of the marble, it had consequences for the whole team.  We compared this to keeping control of our emotions, especially anger, because it might hurt or affect us or other people if we didn't.   We ...

You will need: Spinning tops (see  here  for our homemade version!) Sometimes when we get angry or sad we find it hard not to shout or hit or say something mean. Spin the spinning tops and watch them as they slow down and stop.  Ask God to help you slow down and stop when you are feeling angry.

This is a bit out of sequence with the order of the fruit of the Spirit but I've been testing this out today and thought we'd make some prototypes at Powersource tonight! I've been making prayer stations for the Fruit of the Spirit.  When it got to self control, somehow I couldn't stop thinking about spinning tops that you just have to put your finger on to stop- a bit like God giving us self control to stop us spinning out of control when we get angry or upset.  I thought it would be good to set the tops spinning, think about times when we get angry, stop them and ask God to help us with self control in our lives.  I then saw how to make your own tops and thought we'd have a go instead of buying some! The original idea is  here , but I have adapted it! You will need: Blank CDs, marbles, permanent markers or paint pens, blu or white tack.  Decorate the shiny side of the CD with the markers.  Try to show something about your personality in the colo...