Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

I've been thinking a lot about the parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13: 31-32) recently, and for some reason it keeps cropping up all over the place! Because it's been on my mind, I've made a play dough mat to help children in their exploration.  The seed is a little bit bigger than it should be if we're going to keep accurate proportions, but I wanted children to at least be able to see it! As usual, if you laminate the printed sheets, its much easier to clean up the play dough and you can also keep the mats for repeated future use! To print the mat click here .

Last week we continued our Messy Church theme of Parables and investigated the parable of the mustard seed. It's a tiny parable but has so much in it! 31  He told them another parable:  “The kingdom of heaven is like  a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.   32  Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”  (Matthew 13: 31-32) Here are the crafts we used to think about the story... Mustard Tree cakes (cupcakes with a hole scooped out of them. Plant a Smartie 'seed' in the hole, cover with butter icing and show a paper tree growing where the seed has been planted!) Decorating branches Building Lego homes Growing Seeds Making bird gliders (Kits from Baker Ross at a really reasonable price) Making a prayer tree with prayers on leaves and birds ...

We had a last minute planning situation at our children's group this last Sunday, due to a leader's illness. We were not deterred however!  I got out my Godly play materials to tell the story of the Great pearl and then we had lots of activities to choose from that didn't take a lot of preparation. As most of the children in the group are under 5, it's good when we have a craft that is a bit loose and free flowing and they absolutely love anything to do with food! This craft involved some stuff that I found in my cupboard the night before... You will need: Plain biscuits, icing sugar (made into spreadable icing), sprinkles, cupcake cases, white fondant icing rolled into 'pearls'. Spread some icing on top of the biscuit and then add sprinkles to decorate your 'treasure'. Add a fondant pearl to the top of your treasure biscuit to remember that the pearl was the most special treasure of all.   Finish by covering the biscuit with a cupc...

We are running a series on parables at the moment so this week I have made a colouring sheet for the parable of the persistent neighbour in Luke 11.  To print the sheet, click here . Have fun!

This Sunday we had a Wise and Foolish Builders themed Messy church and things did, indeed, get a bit messy! Here are some of the things we got up to... Playing with moon sand (messy but even the grown ups liked this one!) Painting houses (or anything!) on rocks Building Duplo Houses and deciding whether to put them on sand or on rock... Making Prayer houses: boxes from house templates with a prayer placed inside them.  Download a lovely free template here . Building an entire cardboard city! We then told the story of the wise and foolish builders with the help of a watering can and some sound effects and talked about having God and His words as our rock when times were tricky. Can't wait until next month!

Today our 3-5s learned the story of the lost coin!  Thanks to Kylé for putting this lesson together. After hearing the story, here are some of the things they did...  Coin headbands (silver card coins stapled to ribbon) Prayer activity- find silver card coins around the room, then draw a picture of yourself on the reverse of the coin.  Speak about how Jesus looks for people who are far away from God and is so excited when they get to know God better (just like the woman is when she finds her coin!)  Everyone then shouts 'thank you' to Jesus!  Lost coin bottle (coins hidden in rice and pasta mix).  Shake to find!  Role play items: brush, torches, lights, coins  a collection of coins with pots and tins to hide them in! Take home activity: Laminated pictures (one of which has a coin next to it), painted over with silver paint.  Children scratch off the paint to find the picture with the coin.

We're going to continue our 'kindness' theme in our mid week group by looking at the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. This will be quite a familiar story to our children, but I am interested in what their personal reflections are.  It's been a while since we used a word cloud, but here's the one I've made for this session As usual, I pasted the words of the passage into the  Tagxedo  word cloud creator, making an inverted image so that children can write or draw their reflections in the blank area after they have heard the story.  They can use the words as prompts or to help them to focus on what has struck them about the passage. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with! For a printable document of this word cloud, click  here

As last week's story with felt shapes went down so well at our lunchtime club, we thought we'd try again with a different story.  Because the children are not used to Bible language, we are trying to get the concepts across in a simple, but perhaps slightly unconventional way! Here is the story of the Good Samaritan told in terms of squares and triangles! You will need: A large square (colour 1), a large heart, 3 small squares (colour 2), 1 small square (colour 3), a triangle (colour 4) and a double sided square (I've used red one side, green the other).  You will also need 4 small hearts (3 of them stuck onto rectangles so they can be reversed and the hearts hidden.  You will also need a felt background!  The picture below shows what I mean...  Introduce the heart because this is a story about love.  Then bring in your double sided square.  One day a green square walks into town to do some shopping.  Out of nowhere he is attacked by ...

It's sometimes really hard to keep the attention of the children at our school lunchtime club.  They've been learning hard all morning so it's no wonder they need to let off steam! It means we have to be creative in our story telling.  This method we tried today was the best we've found so far because you can hold the board up for everyone to see and the felt won't fall off! The base board is a piece of board with a sheet of felt glued to it.  All the other pieces are cut up felt and that's it!  It literally took 10 minutes to cut out the pieces and make the board.  Because none of the other pieces are stuck down you can use both them and the board again and again!  There was once a beautiful place where everyone wanted to be.  It was bright and sunny.  No one ever cried or died or got sick.  It was amazing!  To get to the beautiful place, you had to go through a gate...  The gate was guarded by someone who made the de...