Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Yesterday we had an amazing time with our 5-11s as we continued our exploration of what worship is and why we do it. We really believe in allowing children the freedom to explore their relationship with God and to find ways that work for them that might not necessarily work for others!  This means that we try to show them a lot of different methods and let them experiment before they make a decision as to what they like. In terms of worship, we've been trying to show them that sung worship is only one of many ways they can celebrate God and how amazing He is! Here are the various worship stations set up by Tanya for them to try... Communion Space Creative Space Reading Space Holy Space   Building space Seeing space The children absolutely loved this and it was a real shame to have to bring the session to an end!  Each child travelled around the stations at their own pace and some only made it to two or three! The...

As part of the quest to find more visual, interactive ways of storytelling, I decided to have a go at using felt. This took literally half an hour to put together and a little bit longer for drying time! First I got an A4 canvas board that cost about £1 and glued a felt sheet on it.  This is for a background to tell the stories on... Then I cut out some simple shapes from card that would be templates for body, head dress and face. I used the templates to cut out felt pieces... And then glued them together to make simple characters that could be used for most stories.  There are no obvious males and females but that's what we have imagination for! I tried them out by putting them on the board and standing it upright on the window sill.  Everything stayed stuck!   The best thing is that the children can use the figures to retell the story independently if they want to!

 I was thinking about prayer labyrinths the other day and came across finger labyrinths- a portable and very sensory version of the tradition!  I had a go at making one and really found that tracing the path helped me to focus in prayer.  I thought about buying some for the children to use because it might appeal to the more kinaesthetic while they are listening to God in silence but soon realised it was going to be very expensive as we might like to give all of the children a chance to try it at the same time!  The next best thing I could do was make my own.   I'm afraid they're not as tactile as wooden ones might be, but the sense of following the path on a journey with God is the same!  We tested them out with three of the children at Powersource and one, at least, really seemed to find it useful.  We'll introduce them to the children as a whole in the coming weeks.  As with everything, what appeals to some will not appeal to all, but if ...

I happened upon this amazing website today and it really got me thinking about how we could use it to help the children (and ourselves!) reflect on Bible readings... I've always loved word clouds but been frustrated by not being able to save them.   Tagxedo  has solved this problem!  Not only can you save word clouds as JPEGs and PNGs, but you can also choose shapes to form the cloud into.  Here are a couple I made, using shapes to reflect the content. Jonah Chapter 1 Salt and Light, Matthew 5 They are so easy to create by copying and pasting Bible passages.  As with all word clouds, the most frequent words are larger.  It struck me that, after reading the passage, the children could then spend time looking at the word cloud, reflecting on the words that jump out at them and then we could use their responses to start a discussion.  This might especially appeal to visual learners.  We're doing Salt and light tomorrow at Powersource so ...

For anyone interested in following the VAK angle, here's an idea of how some of the prayers you'll find on this blog fit into the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles.  It's only a rough idea and some prayer ideas will fit more than one style!

What kind of learner are you?  How do your children prefer to learn?  When I was teaching, I was fascinated by the concept of learning styles- the idea that different people naturally prefer to learn in different ways.  It really revolutionised how I taught and it's something we certainly need to take into account with the children in our church groups!  The basic VAK model is split into 3 learning styles: Visual- preferring to learn by seeing and reading Auditory- preferring to learn by speaking and listening Kinaesthetic- preferring to learn by touching and doing I realised that the reason I switch off in long sermons is because I am very visual, quite kinaesthetic and not very auditory at all.  If I'm listening I need to be doodling!  It made me see the behaviour of our children differently as well.  The child who's always fiddling might be very kinaesthetic and sitting listening for extended periods is not helpful to him! ...