Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

It can be really amazing when children have the opportunity to respond to Bible stories in completely their own way, without the structure of planned crafts and questions.  I have always been blown away by the depth of what even the youngest children come up with!  Here are some easy ways to help children tell you exactly what they think and feel about a story... 1. Speech and thought bubbles Laminate A4 or A3 speech and thought bubbles and let children write or draw what their favourite characters from the story might be thinking or saying at given points.  Use dry wipe markers for continued use and sellotape a pencil on the back so that children can hold them up to their mouths or heads and pretend to be the character! 2. Feelings cards Think about how characters in the story might feel about events and/ or what the events of the story make the children feel.   Click here to print off the cards.  I have cut, laminated and punched holes in them to...

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Hand in Hand Conference in Eastbourne and really enjoyed helping to lead the 'Hands On' stream with Victoria from GodVenture .  We really wanted to give leaders lots of ideas to help children explore and experiment with their responses to Bible stories and in prayer.  What better way to do that then to get the leaders exploring and experimenting for themselves?! This was one of my favourite activities set up by Victoria and is such an easy but effective way of helping children to respond to Bible stories with freedom. You will need: Old picture frames, 'bits and pieces' e.g. lolly sticks, match sticks, leaves, glass pebbles, stones, pine cones, ribbons, an old sheet (optional) Lay out the empty picture frames on the sheet and arrange your different objects and pieces into open containers. Tell a Bible story and then ask the children to use the objects to make their own picture response either inside or outside a fr...

This is an idea to help children to communicate their response to a story.  It's absolutely fascinating to find out what children really think about what they hear and, while some children can easily tell you what they think, some find it more difficult.  Knowing what children feel about a story or helping them to explore what people in the story might be feeling is a great way to open up discussion and also helps to check their understanding.  More often than not, they come up with something we adults would never have thought of! The cards are really easy to use.  Print them out (click here ) and cut them up.  When you have told a story, spread them out and let the children choose cards that show either how they feel about certain points in the story or how specific characters might feel.  I'm sure that the children will come up with even more feeling words, but hopefully this will be a starting point for discussion!

Today our 5-11s explored the beatitudes.  Click here for our  beatitudes resources ! After exploring each statement, we gave the children access to the junk box!  In the box there's a random selection of plastic cups, card, paper, foil, lolly sticks and just about anything we could get our hands on and cram in!  The children used anything they wanted to make something that reflected an element of what they's learned.  Leaders were on hand to help but the children had no problems coming up with their own ideas!    Here's what they came up with...  Chains to represent the persecuted people God would care for  Scales to represent those who seek righteousness  A dove's head (he didn't manage to make the whole bird in the time allowed!) to represent the peacemakers.  A shining cross because 'when we forgive people it's like God's light shining out, like Jesus on the cross'  A shining heart for when we t...

Periodically, as a response to the teaching, we use word clouds to help the children reflect.  I can't get enough of them because I love the colours! Here is a Beatitudes word cloud, made from pasting the Bible verses into the creator.  Children can use the heart space to write or draw how they feel about what they have learned or what the remember most/ liked most.  The words can be used as prompts to help them if they want. For a printable version (two word clouds to a page) click  here .

I'm off into school tomorrow to do a lesson about the Nativity story and I've decided to use word clouds to help the children to think about the story. Most of the children are very familiar with what happens but word clouds picking up on specific words really help to open the story up in a different way... I've made two word clouds by copying and pasting the words of Luke 2:1-20 into the creator at Tagxedo . The first one is simply a star shape that they can look at and see which words strike them most (including ones that puzzle them and we can talk about!) The second is an inverted star, with space for children to write and draw what sticks with them most about the story. Printable versions of the word clouds are available  here .

Yesterday we had an amazing time with our 5-11s as we continued our exploration of what worship is and why we do it. We really believe in allowing children the freedom to explore their relationship with God and to find ways that work for them that might not necessarily work for others!  This means that we try to show them a lot of different methods and let them experiment before they make a decision as to what they like. In terms of worship, we've been trying to show them that sung worship is only one of many ways they can celebrate God and how amazing He is! Here are the various worship stations set up by Tanya for them to try... Communion Space Creative Space Reading Space Holy Space   Building space Seeing space The children absolutely loved this and it was a real shame to have to bring the session to an end!  Each child travelled around the stations at their own pace and some only made it to two or three! The...

As we are looking at the fruit of the Spirit  this term, I thought it might be interesting to get out the box of colours and objects to see what the children think of it all! It's always incredibly interesting what the children come up with when we give them the freedom to respond in an individual way and this time was no exception.   We talked about each fruit of the spirit and what it meant and then I asked each child to choose one of the fruits and to make a picture to symbolise what it meant to them.  We then would have to guess which they had chosen... Forgive the fuzziness of some of the photos!  Love- pink was the colour this child chose to reflect this fruit and the person is reflecting love from the mirror heart  Peace- This child chose shells because they were smooth and not jagged which was a more 'angry' feel.  He also associated love (hearts) with peace and had made a mirror effect because whenever he got angry he found that loo...

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...