Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

This activity came about by accident when I was helping to run activities for under 5s at a church camping weekend.  A friend had made some Moon Sand and children had proceded to mix loom bands in with it.  Searching for the hidden loom bands became a great game and the added bonus of sensory play was brilliant! Use this for exploring the 'searching' element of the Lost Sheep or Lost Coin stories. You will need: 8 cups of flour and 1 cup of baby oil (or vegetable oil will also work- see here for a recipe ), loom bands, a tray with sides to keep the Moon Sand in. Mix the oil and flour thoroughly.  You will end up with something resembling shortbread mixture, dry but forming clumps when you press it together.  It will easily crumble back when you have finished pressing it! Hide the loom bands in the mixture and then encourage the children to find them.  You might want to turn it into a game and see who can find the most.  It will get a bit messy ...

We had a lot of fun today in Tots with our lost sheep!  We're trying to link the work we do with creche (0-3s), Sparks (3-5s) and Tots (0-3s on Thursdays). With the younger children our main aim is to build familiarity with the stories so, as our story on Sunday will be the lost sheep, we thought we'd bring the story bag  along to Tots and see what happened! As the children are very young we didn't really do anything structured, we just let them go into the bag and play with what they found. At one point we read the story to anyone who wanted to listen and we interacted with their play because they found a lot to do! We got out our collection of sheep.  The most popular seemed to be the fluffy ones made from a pompom and a bit of card for the face!  One lucky sheep went for a ride...  one child insisted on putting a bit of cotton wool on each love heart...  we had to herd as many sheep as we could into the pen... then the children star...

Our 3-5s will be looking at the Lost sheep on Sunday and here is the creative prayer we will use with them... We will talk about how much the shepherd loves the lost sheep that he keeps looking until he finds it and this is how much God loves all of us.  We will then put everyone's name on a sheep shape and each child can put their sheep onto a green field background, saying thank you to God for loving us!

As part of the child led lesson on the Lost Sheep we had this week, this is how we prayed... Before the younger children came down we hid lots of paper hearts around the room.  After we had told the story, we talked very briefly about how God loved each one of us as much as he loved the lost sheep he went to find. The children then went to find all of the hidden hearts.  They each write their name on a heart and placed it on  top of our lovely cuddly sheep toy.  A leader then said thank you to God for loving us and thank you for the people we love. Everyone said a big Amen and the older children taught the younger ones an active way of 'Amen' ing!

One of the new ideas we've tried out this term is to encourage the children to take a more active part in the teaching on a Sunday morning.  This was our first attempt... After teaching the 5-11s the story of the lost sheep and getting them to reflect and respond creatively (see  here  for details), we asked them to think about how they would teach the story to a younger age group. We divided the lesson into parts: Worship game story craft prayer Children decided which part they'd like to help lead and then they got into small groups, with some adult input where necessary, and planned what they would do to lead that part of a lesson for 3-5 year olds. This is the plan they came up with: Worship- sing 'Great Big God' and 'Bigger than big' with actions (children leading) Game- squeak, squeak, Baa, Baa- a variation on a well known game where a child turns their back and has to guess who has said 'squeak, squeak, baa, baa' st...

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...

One of the stories we will be doing with our 3-5 year olds next term is the lost sheep.  Inspired by the discovery bottles that Catherine is making for creche, I thought I'd try a twist on it myself for this story! I got a plastic jar from the pound shop, filled it with rice and lentils and put a toy sheep inside... Burrow down in the lentils to hide the sheep, put on the lid and then shake to find it again!   You can then keep hiding and discovering the sheep without taking the lid off.  If necessary I will glue the lid down!! 

Here is our third bag that we are preparing for parents to borrow.  As before, it's most suitable for 3-5s, but younger children might like some of the things too! There is a story book, a green cloth, some plastic sheep and a plastic fence and gate (found amongst the church toys!), some cotton wool, pictures of shepherds and sheep from Christmas cards, heart post its, sad and happy face plates, party horns and a cuddly sheep to play hide and seek with.  As with the other two bags, once everything is labelled it will be ready.  Please feed back!