Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

This term, our 5-11s are learning about what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount.  This week we got to the section on oaths or promises.  After some discussion, we focussed on verse 37- the part where people are told to let their yes be yes and their no be no!   To make the point about how easy we find it to break promises but how hard it is to keep them, I gave everyone an egg.  The children then had to play a running and jumping game holding their egg and continue caring for it until the end of the session.  This made the point that, in order to keep a promise and not break it, we had to take constant care!  In other words, don't say you will do something unless you are willing to go the distance with it and put in the effort.  I did give out raw eggs.  If you are less brave (or possibly much more sensible!) you might give the children hard boiled eggs.  We only had two cracks by the end of the session and only one of those requi...

As we are looking at the fruit of the Spirit  this term, I thought it might be interesting to get out the box of colours and objects to see what the children think of it all! It's always incredibly interesting what the children come up with when we give them the freedom to respond in an individual way and this time was no exception.   We talked about each fruit of the spirit and what it meant and then I asked each child to choose one of the fruits and to make a picture to symbolise what it meant to them.  We then would have to guess which they had chosen... Forgive the fuzziness of some of the photos!  Love- pink was the colour this child chose to reflect this fruit and the person is reflecting love from the mirror heart  Peace- This child chose shells because they were smooth and not jagged which was a more 'angry' feel.  He also associated love (hearts) with peace and had made a mirror effect because whenever he got angry he found that loo...

We've been having a go this week at responding to a story with the new box of colours and items!  See  here  for contents. We were looking at 'The Lost Sheep' story with our 5-11s.  We read the story from the Bible and discussed what it might mean. Then the children were given the freedom to choose a colour and items from the box to illustrate their response: how the story made them feel, what it meant to them, questions they had, things they liked or didn't like etc.  They were able to explain what they had done or not to share, depending on how they felt.  It was amazing how quiet they kept to listen to others explaining their pictures when normally it's hard to keep them focussed while others are talking!  Here are some of their pictures... The shepherd looking for the lost sheep The sheep pen and the shepherd's love for the sheep Mirrors representing the 99 sheep and a lone mirror for the lost sheep and a heart for the shepherd...

Every week we go into school to do a lunchtime club with 7-11 year olds.  Because everyone's learning style is different it's hard to keep everyone focussed at the same time,  but this activity had everybody participating for the whole time and they loved it!  More than that, it really helped us to go deeper with the children and to help them express their ideas about spiritual matters.   The children had expressed a real interest in talking about Heaven.  We'd discussed it the previous week but I wanted the children to show me their ideas and to see what being creative would uncover! We started by asking the children to imagine a place where they felt entirely safe and entirely happy.  We then invited them to choose a foam sheet of a colour that represented that place to them.  Next we told them that the Bible says that heaven is a place where there is no more death or crying or fear or sadness (except maybe tears of joy as one pointed out!)....

Last week we had Anita from Finland staying with us and she was able to tell me a little bit about her work using Religion Pedagogishe Praxis, a German method of spiritual exploration with children, involving the group making a symbol of the story with colour and small objects. I really liked what she told me and wanted to try out some of the ideas! RRP is not well known in the UK so I can't claim to know any of the theory but I just wanted to explore what would happen if I used  some colours and objects with children to help them explore an idea.  I'm hoping to learn the proper process at a future date!!   Anyway... I put together a basic kit box I could use quite cheaply from The Range and from stuff I had already lying around. A multipack of felt rectangles and a multipack of coloured foam sheets (children need a choice so there needs to be a few of each colour). Candles, tea lights and a set of tiles from the pound shop Buttons, shells,...