Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

  Our harvest service last Sunday was all about thanking God for our gifts- food, people, talents- anything we wanted to celebrate.  One of the activities that both adults and children contributed to was our harvest leaf garland.  We folded leaves in autumn colours and added tags with things we were thankful for: You will need: ribbon, wool or string, paper in red, organge and yellow, scissors, pens Click here for a downloadable sheet of instructions!

I got my dates a little bit out of sync when I was planning the lessons this term, so we ended up with harvest a month late in Sparks!  Never mind- the children enjoyed it anyway! We told the creation story with our new  Creation story bag After the story, children tasted some different fruits, made some print paintings with pasta, and then chose from a selection of play activities: Play food and 'cooking' utensils  Books about nature and farming play dough with animal and people cutters. While playing, leaders had the chance to chat to the children about the story and all the things God has made in the world. We finished with a prayer, thanking God for all the things that grow.  Each child planted some cress seeds in a cup and we asked God to help us look after the things He has given us.

Here is our latest story at home bag.  In honour of Harvest, we have made a creation story bag! Contents include: Creation story touch and feel story book Play food 2 playmobil people A wooden heart (as a sign of God's love) Animal snap cards Star ribbon Felt sun Globe ball Soft toy duck and Zebra Blue fabric (sea) Playdough (can be used to make shapes of things children would like to thank God for) It will be available for parents to borrow in the next few weeks !

As this Sunday was Harvest, we wanted to let even the youngest children experience something of the season!  Here's how we themed our activities in crèche to allow for exploration of God as creator. As well as our usual set up of things such as the see-saw and slide, we put out...  Play food (including our lovely new fabric food from IKEA!)  Hardy fresh food that children can touch and feel.  They even found that bashing coconuts with wooden spoons got a good sound!  Cold cooked spaghetti to feel (though this also was very tempting to eat!)  Board books about animals and nature Play dough in lids and seeds/ beans to stick into it.   We're going to keep a harvest theme for a few weeks, but vary what we put out.  We're also hoping to put together a harvest story bag to borrow.  More details to come!

Here's how we told the creation story at our Harvest Messy Church this week.  We're going to do the same thing again tomorrow at the harvest service at our local primary school.  It's very visual and helps you to involve a lot of children! You will need a big bag to put everything in.  We took things out one at a time (in the correct order!) and asked everyone what part of the story they thought it showed...  Day 1: God says 'Let there be light!' (black and yellow felt joined together)  Day 2: God separates the waters above and the waters below and makes the sky (dark blue and light blue felt joined together) Day 3: God separates the sea and the land and makes the plants (green and blue felt joined together and a flower)  Day 4: God makes the sun, moon and stars (headband with sun on one side and moon and stars on the other side)  Day 5: God makes the birds and the fish  Day 6: God makes the animals and humans ...

After telling the creation story, we thought it would be great for everyone to thank God for something in creation they really loved.   Someone had donated a large plastic map of the world which was just perfect!  We held the map up and thanked God for the world He created.  Then we played some music and asked people to come up and choose a picture of food, plants or animals and place it somewhere on the map to thank God for that thing.  Then we rounded off with a big thank you and Amen!  Even the toddlers could join in this activity easily :-)

Today we had our Harvest Messy Church and looked at the story of creation from Genesis 1.   Here are the crafts we did... Some of these crafts and other harvest ideas can be found on my  Harvest Messy Church Pinterest Board Day 1: Light and dark tent.  A pop up two man tent, covered in drapes to make it dark inside.  Children were then given glow sticks to take inside.  The toddlers loved this! Day 2: Separating the waters and the sky.  Water play. Day 3: Separating the land and the sea.  For this day we had two crafts using food and the seeds food is grown from... Play dough seed patterns Spaghetti painting Day 4: Sun, moon and stars- suncatchers for windows Day 5: Fish and birds- paper plate birds Day 6: Animal hunt- pictures of animals hidden round church for children to find Biscuit people Day 7: focussing on God.  What would you like to thank Him for? And an area for babies to play in... ...

This Sunday in creche, the theme was God the Creator.  Here are some of the things Catherine put out for the children to explore and play with...  Toy farm Books about plants and animals Pictures of insects Discovery basket of natural items (including seeds in the bag!) Farm and creature jigsaws Fruit and vegetables with different textures to feel... We also sang one of our favourites- Bigger than Big!