Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

 This week's lectionary has a variety of stories to choose from, but we will be looking at the old testament reading: the story of God putting a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his promise never to flood the earth again.  Some parts of the story of Noah's ark can be quite upsetting, and can inspire big questions about life, God's power and the consequences of doing wrong things. In the background, however, is the overarching story of listening to God, rescue, new beginnings, and God's promise to be with us. As the story ends, we have the powerful symbol of the rainbow stretched across the sky as a sign of God's life-giving love for us and his creation, and his promise never to send a flood again.  This week's play dough mat is an invitation to explore this part of the story and also to think about what promises mean. What is a promise? What does it mean to make a promise? What does God promise and what do God's people promise Him in return? How does it feel ...

The rainbow is a great symbol for Christians of God's love and promise to us.  It's also the symbol of new beginnings- a key message of Christianity.  This activity helps children to think about their own ability to share God's love with others and to pray for those who don't yet know that love.  Plus it's pretty amazing to watch over time! You will need: 6 clear cups, water, food colouring in red, yellow and blue, 6 sheets of absorbent kitchen roll Fill 3 of the cups half full with coloured water and arrange with the three unfilled cups like so: Fold the kitchen roll in half lengthways and then double it over again. Place the end of each piece of kitchen roll in one of the cups of water and the other end in an empty cup, so that it looks like this: Wait! The water will start to climb the paper and pass into the empty cup where it will mix with the water from the next cup but one, which will also be transferring over... Your empty...

I was looking round the pound shop this week and came across a section of garden trellises.  For £1 you could get a trellis that expands to almost 1m x 2m and I couldn't resist getting one! I'd got hold of some different coloured ribbon from the scrapstore and was going to make something rainbow/ Noah's ark related with it so the trellis actually comes in quite handy. This is an idea that most ages can use because it's really simple, though younger children might need help with tying...  Have a selection of ribbons of different colours available.  Children choose a ribbon, thank God for something of that colour (e.g. green plants, red strawberries) and then tie their ribbon to the trellis wherever they want to.  Eventually the whole trellis will be covered in colour!   You can even push the trellis back together again for easy storage and transportation.  If you don't have a trellis, any kind of mesh would do and then, when you weren't using it, y...

Today in Sparklers we had a go at mess free painting and made some rainbow pictures!  Click here  to find the Pinterest post I got the idea from!  This would be ideal for a lesson on Noah's ark and I might try it out next term in Sparks.  This is what we did... Squirt some paint onto some card (not too much!) Put the painty card into resealable sandwich bags and close them.  We then laid them out on a mat for the children to access easily as they wanted. Squidge the paint over the card by pressing on top of the bag. Carefully remove the card from the bag when you've had enough squidging! Hang the pictures up to dry!