Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

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 ...

Next week we will be telling the final story in our series about meals Jesus shared in the Bible.  Here is how we will tell the story visually with coloured cards... Two of Jesus' followers were on the road, walking to a place called Emmaus.  They were very sad because Jesus had just died. A man, who they did not recognise, joined them on the road.  He asked them what they were talking about and why they were sad.  They explained to the man what had happened to Jesus.  They told the strange man that some of their women friends believed that Jesus had risen to new life but they didn't know what to believe as they had not seen him themselves. The man walked with them and obviously knew a lot about God and what the scriptures said (add a gold piece to the 'Jesus' figure). As they walked along, the man explained to them everything the scriptures said about who Jesus was. The men learned a lot about what God had planned! (add gold pieces to ...

As part of our summer Sunday sessions looking at meals Jesus had in the Bible, we looked at the story of Jesus turning water into wine.  Here's what we did... Starting game: red and blue memory game You will need a collection of cards, half of which are blue and half of which are red and all of which have the same colour backs.  I did this by sticking blue card to white card and red card to white card and then cutting them up.  Lay them out colour side down.  Children take it in turns to turn over 2 cards, hoping to make a matching colour pair.  This is great because we had 3 year olds and 11 year olds playing the same game with no problems! Story To tell the story we used a Foo Can (an illusion widely available- I got mine from Amazon).  I have a collection of illusions for various occasions and this one fitted the story really well!  Without giving away the secret it means that with, some prior preparation, you can pour clear wat...

As part of the quest to find more visual, interactive ways of storytelling, I decided to have a go at using felt. This took literally half an hour to put together and a little bit longer for drying time! First I got an A4 canvas board that cost about £1 and glued a felt sheet on it.  This is for a background to tell the stories on... Then I cut out some simple shapes from card that would be templates for body, head dress and face. I used the templates to cut out felt pieces... And then glued them together to make simple characters that could be used for most stories.  There are no obvious males and females but that's what we have imagination for! I tried them out by putting them on the board and standing it upright on the window sill.  Everything stayed stuck!   The best thing is that the children can use the figures to retell the story independently if they want to!

One of the stories we will be looking at next term is the story of creation in Genesis 1. I get really excited by visual ways of telling stories, so I thought I'd make some for us to use.  I chose to use cork mats and paper as we are trying to get away from plastic if possible! It took about an hour and a half to make them because I had to keep referring back to the Bible to make sure I was getting it right!! All you need is: Different coloured and patterned paper, scissors, glue, cork mats Cut and stick! Day 1- Darkness and light, day and night Day 2- separation of sea and sky (waters above and waters below) Day 3- Land and sea, plants Day 4- Sun to rule the day and moon to rule the night Day 5- Birds and fish Day 6- humans, animals, insects, reptiles Day 7- rest

Over the summer we are doing scaled down children's work with one group for 3-11s!  It's not an easy task to keep everyone involved but we are having a go! This week, reflecting what the adults were doing in the main church, we looked at the calling of Levi.  Here's what we did... Game:  Ball change! In a bag put 5 red balls, 5 blue balls and 5 yellow balls.  Split children in to two teams- red team and blue team.  Children take it in turns to reach into the bag and pull out a ball.  Red team are looking for red balls, blue team are looking for blue balls.  If children pull out a ball of their colour, they keep it.  If they pull out a ball of the wrong colour, they have to put it back in the bag.  The first team to pull out all 5 balls of their colour is the winner! Story telling with coloured cards: Click  here  to go to the post showing how we told the story in a very visual way! Next we talked about the fact that...

We're always trying different ways to tell stories in visual ways, so here is what we tried today in our scaled down summer group! You will need: small square shaped cards- 1 gold, 5 double sided cards, green one side and red on the other 4 green cards with red stripes Jesus (Gold card) ...met a tax collector called Levi.  In Jesus day people thought that Tax Collectors were not good people and, like everyone, Levi had done things that he was sorry for doing.  Jesus said to Levi "Follow me!" Levi got up, left his things and followed Jesus.  Jesus, forgave his sins and helped him to change his life and come closer to God (turn card over to become green). That night, Jesus had dinner at Levi's house with other tax collectors (red cards). Some Pharisees (stripy cards to show that, though they are following the law, they are not changed in the way that Levi and Jesus' followers are) saw what Jesus was doing and said "Why are ...

We couldn't let this week pass without making a link to the Olympics, so we had a lesson on endurance today!! We started by building towers with blocks and seeing who could get the tallest tower before it fell!  If it fell down you just had to start all over again and keep going!  As we were running a summer Sunday session for a group of 3-11s this was especially good as every single child could participate at their own level. Next we looked at the memory verse from Hebrews 12.v1 and put it together with duplo blocks. When we'd put the verse together and looked at its context in the Bible, we needed to unpack it a bit more! We got some battery operated fairy lights (batteries previously removed) and asked the children to switch them on.  When they couldn't we put in the batteries and established that, to keep lit up, they needed batteries to power them.  We also looked at a wind up torch and saw that it wouldn't keep going unless we kep...

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...