Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Yesterday we were thinking about the theme of 'love your neighbour', and made these paper people circles as a symbol of all being joined together in the community. You will need: print out of the 'love your neighbour' sheet or paper, pencil and scissors Option 1-Download the printable sheet and cut the circle of people out Option 2-Download the printable and fold it into eighths.  Cut along the marked edges of the front eighth and open up to show your circle Option 3-Cut out a paper circle and fold it into eighths.  Draw the half people shapes on the front eighth (as shown below) and cut!

For those of you who have followed this blog over a period of time, you will probably know that last month saw the publication of my first book.  I am so excited about it! The book looks amazing and has loads of ideas for helping you to introduce Holy Communion to under 5s.  There are play sessions for Creche areas, sessions for more formal children's church settings and ideas for when you have no children's groups at all. There is also a section for what families can do at home to explore the main themes. What is extra great about this book is that it comes with downloadable and printable material.  To give you a taster, here is one of the play dough mats that links with a session exploring what it means to be part of God's big family.   To print click here You can buy the book here (overseas postage is available) or on Kindle here. Have fun!

As part of our series looking at Holy Communion we spent some time thinking about community, the sign of peace and what it means to make peace with others.  Here's what we did! Game: stand a stick of spaghetti into a bit of play dough and then thread cheerios onto it.  How many cheerios can you get on the stick in 1 minute? Eat the cheerios and then start again.  This game then leads on to talking about bringing people together as a community, which is what we do in the church family. Talk about:  belonging to our own families and to God’s family   How do you show that you belong to a group? Everyone is welcome in God’s family and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done or if you get on with that person! Think about  the part in the liturgy where we say “peace be with you’ and then we reply ‘and also with you’ What does peace mean? How does it feel if peace is ‘with you’? What does it mean to make peace? Why do you...

A while back, a friend suggested that it would be good to have a reflective colouring sheet to fit different parts of the communion service.  This would help children, hopefully, to recognise parts of the liturgy and to reflect a little on what was happening.   Always one to rise to a challenge, here is the first in the set: the gathering... Click here   to print off the sheet and get colouring! Things to talk about: Whay do we come together in church?  What does it mean for the Lord to be 'with you'? Have you ever felt that God is with you? Pray: That God will be with us, our family and friends in the coming week.

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. ...

This is something very simple that I want to introduce this term as part of our prayer routine.  A lot of our prayer stations are to do with praying for ourselves and about ourselves so this activity is intended as a way of praying for others in the group, which will also (hopefully!) lead to more of a sense of family and community. I bought a bag of stones for £1 from the Range and used a permanent marker to write on them the names of everyone in the group (including leaders!). The plan is that, as a prayer station, children can choose one of the stones at random, hold it and ask God to bless that person.  They can they lay it on a cross shape.  We can also use the stones when we gather together after the prayer station time.  Everyone can choose a stone, ask God to bless that person and then remember to ask God to bless them every day that week.  If the person they are praying for is in the room, they could also ask for any requests to bear in mind! ...

This term with our 5-11s we are looking at the Fruits of the Spirit and will be starting with LOVE. With the 5-7s, I'm very aware that we have some non- readers, so I wanted to find a fun way of reinforcing the Bible passage we were using (Acts 2: 44-46- a short and easy to understand explanation of how the early Christians showed their love for each other and for God).   Here is a game I've made which I have scanned so I can make colour copies for the children to use.  Each of the 4 aspects of the community's behaviour has a different symbol (not exactly biblical images but images the children will understand!): Sharing everything- 2 socks (seemed a less destructive image than splitting something in half) Sold things and gave the money to the poor- a gold coin Worshipped together- a cross Shared food together- some cakes  Children throw a dice and move that number of spaces.  If they land on a picture clue and name the behaviour it represents, they ...