Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Here is a free set of lesson plans on the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) to download and use with children.  Each lesson is short (lasting about 30 minutes) and includes a story to look at, a memory verse, questions to think about, a craft and a prayer activity.  They are suitable for 4-11s and might work well with groups where a range of ages is covered. Lessons  include Love Joy Peace Patience Kindness Goodness Faithfulness Gentleness Self-Control Life Changing Spirit There are also ideas for different ways of learning memory verses and further links for each lesson. Click here to print out the lessons. Enjoy and let me know how it goes if you use them!

I 'm in the process of putting together a set of lesson plans for 'The Fruit of the Spirit' so, to add to the collection, here's a reflective colouring page based on Galatians 5:22-23 Click here  to print off the page.  Enjoy colouring!   

This is a great activity for a prayer station or group prayer time focused on praying for the Holy Spirit to come.  It would also work well for discussing the transforming power of the Spirit.   You will need: Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), white vinegar, food colouring, eye droppers (less than 60p each at Boots!) Mix food colouring into white vinegar to colour it.  Keep each colour of vinegar in a separate cup and add a dropper to each cup.  Cover the bottom of a baking tray with bicarbonate of soda.  Drop a drop of coloured vinegar onto the soda and watch the explosion! Think and talk about: Talk about the power of the Spirit and how it can transform our lives if we pray for it to come.  Compare this to the power of the explosion that happens when the vinegar hits the soda.  It might be good also to talk about the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit that can grow in our lives.   Pray: Ask children to ch...

I've used cornflour and water mixtures with children in creche before and know how much they love playing with it! Having spent some time on Pinterest, I now realise that the mixture is called 'oobleck'- always good to have a name for what you are playing with! It struck me that oobleck is a really simple but effective way of helping to teach children about gentleness. The best part is that anyone can join in because oobleck appeals to everone from toddlers to adults (plus it can get a bit messy, which only adds to the appeal!) You will need: cornflour, water (roughly half as much water as cornflour) Mix the water and cornflour together and then pour the mixture out onto a tray. As the children play with the oobleck, they will notice that the slower and more gentle their actions, the more liquid the mixture is and the easier it is to move fingers through it.   Hard, sharp actions, such as slapping down on top of it will meet with solid resistance! ...

This is a good activity to help children reflect on the Spiritual fruit of patience- how we have to sometimes wait and slowly and carefully do something in order to get to the end.  Because this craft takes time and concentration it is a great all-round reflection activity too!  Below are instructions and some ideas to talk and pray about. You will need: Paper plates, wool or string, thin paper strips Cut slits in the sides of a paper plate and thread wool or string through them to make a weaving frame.  Start to weave the paper strips in and out of the frame. Talk about: When do we have to be patient in life?  Can you think of a time?  Do you find it easy? Why is it sometimes better to be patient than to rush? Have you ever asked God to help you to be patient?  What happened? Pray: Choose colours of paper to reflect your personality.  As you weave, ask God to help you to be more patient Write or draw on the paper slips area...

The main objective of our school lunchtime club is to form relationships with the children and to open up discussion about God with them in a natural way.  This seems to happen best when everyone is busy doing something creative! Last week we got to the end of our focus on the fruit of the spirit by looking at 'goodness'- we weren't doing them in order and this just happened to come last, probably because it's the hardest to explain! Sarah hit upon the idea of focussing on what we thought was 'good' about the character of God and then helping the children to relate this to how we should behave ourselves.  In order to do this we decided to let the children make collages of their ideas... We used paper plates as a base and a variety of papers.  Here's what the children came up with! An expression of God's love and his goodness to us.  The child who made this, then was prompted to go and give it to her teacher as a gift! This picture s...

Yesterday, we were thinking about one of our mission partners in South Sudan and the children she works with.  We wanted to make something as a gift to show the children there that we were thinking of them: something that would somehow show a link between us.  We ended up making some friendship bracelets to send to them. While this was a specific craft to show friendship, it opens up conversation about kindness and showing people that you care about them by doing something for them- kindness seems, after all, to be about showing care for others.  It would be a great craft if you were thinking about kindness as one of the fruit of the Spirit because it's easy and it involves connecting things together (beads, wool, pipe cleaners) to show that we are linked to other people by kind acts that we do for them or they do for us. We made the bracelets by choosing a pipe cleaner and... ...threading Hama beads onto them in various patterns  ...winding different colour...

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 ...

Today we wanted to focus on the spiritual fruit of patience at our school lunchtime club.  This particular group (all girls!) respond most to doing something with their hands and chatting.  We're making it our mission just to build relationships and pass on something of our own experiences with God rather than teaching an all singing all dancing programme of activities! So... Today we had a little chat about what patience was and then we made some cup and ball games.  For those of you who don't know, this involves a ball attached to a string attached to a cup.  The aim is to get the ball into the cup by throwing it and trying to catch. Each person will need: a paper/ plastic cup, string (an adult arm's length), a ball (we used ball pond or ping pong balls) some sellotape and something to decorate the cup with. Make a small hole in the bottom of the cup and thread some string through.  Tie a knot at the end of the string just inside the cup.  Sellotape...

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.

You will need: Feathers Sometimes we can be rough in the way we talk to or touch others.  Touch the feathers and feel how gentle they are.  Ask God to give you more gentleness.

You will need: Sticks, jar or bottle to stand sticks in, ribbon If we are friends with someone we trust them to stick with us, even when it is hard.  Who do you trust to stick with you?  Who can trust you to stick with them?  Choose a stick and tie a ribbon on it and ask God to help you to stick with Him, even when it is hard.

You will need:  Dove pictures, pens, paper clips, string Is there part of your life that makes you feel stressed?  A dove is a sign of peace. Take a dove shape and write or draw on it the thing that stresses you.  Pin it to the line as a sign that you are asking God to bring you peace in that area.

Here is the prayer station we are going to use for 'patience'. Sometimes we can't do a job quickly.  We need to wait or to take our time so that the job is done well. Slowly put the jigsaw together and check everything is in the right place.  As you are doing it, speak to God in your head and ask him to help you have more patience in your life.

Here is our 'goodness' prayer station...   Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing and we need God to help us to make good choices.  Stick a piece of gold inside the person shape and ask God to help you to grow in goodness!

This Sunday we will be exploring the Fruit of the Spirit through different prayer stations.  The 5-11s have been working through the fruit during our regular Sunday sessions.  So far we are up to kindness but, as this Sunday is half term, we are taking a break from the usual routine and taking a brief look at everything! So far I have posted prayer stations for love and joy and I will post one for each of the fruit in the coming days.  Today, though, we have 'kindness'! You will need: A jar, a collection of cards (as above with the words 'say', 'help', 'give' or 'smile' written on them), a piece of poster paper split into quarters with each word written in a separate quarter. Take one of the cards from the jar.  Take it home and do that thing during the week.  Smile at someone you know help someone at home or school say something nice to someone give or share something with someone Write or draw what you did on the back a...

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...

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...

Thanks to Sam for this great idea! Here is the second prayer activity for our Fruits of the Spirit theme this term: Joy! Children take a pipe cleaner and twist it round their finger to make a spring.  Springs are bouncy and fun, reminding us of the feeling of joy!  As they make the spring, children can pray that God will grow the fruit of joy in their lives.  They can then take it home as a reminder to keep asking God for joy in their lives, families and relationship with Him.

This term our focus is the Fruits of the Spirit so our first session looked at LOVE. We've done a lot of work on God's love for us, so I thought we'd look a little bit at how we show love for each other. As we have a lot of non- readers, I wanted to use symbols rather than words to give the message and I wanted the session to be interactive!   First we discussed what we thought love was.  Between ourselves we decided that love was showing someone we really cared a lot about them.   Then we found the symbols that would help us to understand a bit more about the example of the early Christians who were showing love to each other (the verse we looked at was Acts 2: 44-46).  I wanted this to be a surprise so I made some 'punch bowls'.  We often put things in balloons and pop the balloons to reveal words or items, but some children don't like the popping sound.  This is much quieter but still fun! First I got a cardboard bowl and drew round it...