Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

I've put together a discovery basket for younger children when we do our Easter family activities morning. This basket looks at the story of Palm Sunday and I'll have some story books with it so that parents can help children to engage with the items! Contents include:  Donkey puppet, plastic palm leaves, palm crosses, a crown, strips of fabric of different textures (to represent the cloaks put on the ground). Coconut halves (donkey hooves!), bells to make some noise, a heart, a stone (to represent the road Jesus travelled along) and a small tin with magnetic letters spelling 'hosanna' and 'Jesus.'

Over the next 4 weeks or so, the whole church (adults and children) is looking at and learning about various aspects of Holy Communion: what it is, why we do it, signs, symbols, stories and liturgy.  At the end of the series, we will have a special celebration where I will preside at communion for the first time and one of our children will take her first communion.  It is actually quite exciting to all be learning together! We have set up a 'treasure chest' for children to role play with during the service, using an old box we found in an antique shop.  This is what we put inside... Handkerchiefs in the 4 liturgical colours (plus extra white ones for children to use as purificatory to wipe the cup with), wooden crosses and doves. A felt book of church symbols (see a future post on this!) Some metal cups and plates found for a bargain price in a charity shop, some wooden bread, hearts, battery operated candles and a globe ball. We pu...

We're having a Nativity Activity day on Saturday and I'm busy getting things ready!  Here's something we're going to use to help the younger children to explore and play with the Nativity story: a discovery box full of items connected to the story and friendly for smaller hands. It's very easy to put together.  I got a big cardboard box, shredded some yellow paper and then put some Nativity themed items inside.  Here's what's in the box... Wooden nativity character decorations felt stars wooden hearts a fabric heart a wooden cross a wooden dove a battery operated candle three small gift boxes some coconut shells (to make animal hoof noises!) a glittery discovery bottle to help children connect with the awe and wonder of Jesus' birth Looking forward to playing!

I had a lovely time recently, learning about liturgy boxes and how toys and other items can help children (including under 5s) to interact with parts of liturgy, especially when there are no formal children's activities. Carloynn over at the Spiritual Child Network  has put together details of how liturgy boxes work with some great  examples .  Using those ideas as a springboard I've come up with a selection of items to help children interact with parts of the Communion liturgy.  It probably works best with some guided adult interaction to start off with, but children will become more familiar as they get used to the objects and symbols!  Have a go and let me know how it works for you... Gathering/ worship/ awe and wonder: Dancing ribbons, shakers, a simple kaleidoscope and a reflection bottle. Confession: A holding cross Word/ Bible reading: Bible story books Intercessions: Play people and a globe ball Eucharistic...

We had a great time exploring this story this morning!  There was a group of children aged from 1-3 with their parents joining in as well.  We had a lot of play and popcorn too! Here's how we explored the story... Telling the story with props (felt bread and fish that took me about an hour to sew but can be used for so much in the future!) Making popcorn to show how a very little, with the right help...  ...can go a long way! The children really loved watching the popcorn pop into the bowl and were very patient.  We then shared the popcorn out and ate it together, sitting on the floor like the people Jesus fed. Free play with toy food, plates and utensils playdough with plates, knives, forks and cups Magnetic thank you prayers for the things God gives us.

I've been doing a little bit of experimenting with sensory bottles this week as I wanted to make some to help under 5s to explore the story of Jesus Calming the Storm.  Sensory bottles are great!  They're easy and cheap to make and provoke a lot of wonder-even in the adults who play with them!  Children can use them in a very reflective way, watching the shapes and colours and we've used them before in prayer activities for over 5s. Here's what I've made so far... 1. Water, green glitter and blue seed beads 2. Rice and matchsticks (to make rain/ storm noises) 3.Water, blue and green sequins and blue and green mini Pom-poms  4.Water, coloured with a little bit of blue food colouring  (filled to just over half way up the bottle), topped up to the top of the bottle with baby oil. 5. Baby oil, blue and green sequins and blue loom bands. As you can see, the idea was to keep with a blue/green 'water' theme. The baby oil and water mix is great as there ...

I'm so excited to have Victoria from GodVenture contributing a guest post with a Nativity theme! Her site has some brilliant prayer and devotional ideas for children and families and she has written some great books to help the family celebrate Jesus together.  Be sure to check out GodVenture ! Here's what Victoria has to share... I’m always looking for different ways to play with the nativity story, and since I have two girls under five who love dressing things, I thought this would be fun for them. It’s DIY fuzzyfelt, and it only took me about 30 minutes to make! All you need is: Felt Sharp scissors for cutting felt A big piece of card or board for your backdrop Masking tape I started by taping a huge piece of grey felt to my board. They were a little concerned that the grey wasn’t a nice colour, but I knew the other brighter colours would look good on it. You don’t have to use grey of course, and you could make your board out of different piec...

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! ...

Here's the first in the series of Easter Story Play dough mats.  Thanks so much to Lindsay for giving me this idea! There will be mats to help children play and explore with play dough the events of: Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, Gethsemane, The Crucifixion, The Burial of Jesus and The Resurrection.  This is the first: Palm Sunday! First click here and print off a copy.  If possible, laminate it so it can be cleaned and used again.  Now let the fun begin! Talk to the children about the events of palm Sunday, including the joy of the people to see Jesus and the hosannas they were calling out.  Let them use play dough to make smiling faces on the people and even more palm branches!

By Catherine Ward I'd been thinking for some time about how to allow the creche children some more chance for some big movement in the creche room. We don't have wheeled toys, not because I think they're a bad idea just because we haven't really lots of space. The children have, however, always loved the little slide that we have, the seesaw and the tunnel. I wanted something fairly small and static so that in didn't invade on anyone wanting to be quiet with the sand or some books but would give some more possibilities for people who did want to do some moving about.  If you've read any of my other entries on this blog you'll know that I believe that it can be appropriate to give children things which weren't designed to be toys so long as you're being realistic about health and safety. After some though I worked out what I was looking out for: an aerobics step. Designed to be strong, to take weight bouncing on and off it, not to slip on th...

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!

By Catherine Ward We’re really lucky that we’ve got enough space to have rooms set aside for children’s work. We’ve been working on turning the crèche room into a really enabling environment for our under threes. It has taken quite some time, the whole church has just been reordered, and the old church offices (originally the rectory), now being transformed into our children’s centre, has been used as storage space. It’s been a job some weeks just getting the space safe for the children before a Sunday morning with all sorts of furniture stacked up in the corner. Finally though, the extra things have been cleared out and it’s feeling like we’re really getting somewhere. We’ve thought really carefully about what we want in the space and why and the first thing that was really important to us was comfy, adult-sized chairs. We’ve been left with the old clergy chairs out of the chancel. They’re not the most comfy things in the world, but they are big and with enough cushions you ca...

One of the best bargains I've recently bought is my pop up two man tent- reduced to £15!  When I'd spent an hour figuring out how to collapse it again I was sorted! The children absolutely love the tent so, when we had a story when we could legitimately use it we did! We told the story of God calling Abraham out from the place he lived and sending him on a journey.  Of course, Abraham had to live in a tent!  After we'd walked, run, hopped and jumped round the room, we popped out the tent and got inside. Next we got the stars out on the floor of the tent and talked about God promising Abraham that he would have children as many as the stars in the sky... Then we told of the three men visiting Abraham, sharing food and telling him that next year he would have a son even though he was very old... We all practised laughing which was fun! Then we got the baby doll out and celebrated because Sarah and Abraham had had a child even though they were ve...