Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

The Church School where we did our week long prayer space in September has asked me to help with setting up prayer activities for each classroom. The idea is that an activity will stay in a class for 2 weeks and then be swapped with one from another classroom. At the end of last week we got all of the new prayer activities into the library and each class came to test them out! Prayer board: requests pinned on one side and moved over to the other side when they have been answered Prayer Play Dough Mats Writing letters to God Healing prayers: Writing on plasters the names of people who need to get better  Reflective space: with books, colouring sheets, marble mazes , reflection bottles and mermaid sequin cushions. We will also be giving out a monthly take home prayer activity for each child. January was coin prayers!

Here is another idea that you could easily do at home as a family Lent activity.  It would also work well in any setting with an oven! I've always fancied making pretzels but, to be completely honest, I don't have a lot of spare time for bread baking and I find that, if you are working with a children's group, making real pretzels is not going to fit into your time allocation!  These are scone 'pretzels' so not the same but much quicker than the traditional kind!! Pretzels are traditionally linked with Lent because they are said to resemble arms crossed in prayer.  I can't say that this is a position I have ever prayed in, but I certainly like the link!  Here's how to make them and then ideas to help you include some prayer in the activity... Ingredients:  100g self raising flour 30g butter milk to mix tablespoon sugar Pinch of salt 1 Egg Preheat the even to 180C Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in t...

This is a very easy and visual way to pray.  You can use it as a prayer station for ages, as a collaborative piece in a children's group or at home with the family.  The best thing is that you can keep on adding to it for as long as you want! You will need: Strips of coloured paper, glue, pens and pencils Encourage children to help you assign types of prayer to different colours of paper e.g,  Red- sorry White- people who have upset you who you want to forgive Yellow- thanks Pink- please Blue-other people Green- the world Write or draw your prayers onto the paper strip and then add it to the paper chain!

This is an easy, inexpensive way to pray very visually. You will need: Chalkboards of any size, cups of water, paintbrushes. Encourage the children to paint their written or drawn prayers onto the chalkboard with water. This is particularly good for sorry prayers as the water will dry up and the sorry prayer will fade away as a sign of how God forgives us when we are sorry.  For the same reason, it's a good way of helping children to release their prayers to God and visualise them being handed over.

I found this idea on Pinterest recently and it really got me thinking!  I've adapted the idea and turned it into a reflective prayer and praise idea that will work well with older children who like to use words... Very simply, all you need is a permanent marker pen and some decorative glass nuggets... Write words describing God and/or prayer words onto the top of the nuggets.  Words I used are in the following list but there are so many more you could use! Joy, great, good, God, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, you, hope, me, amazing, have, peace, kind, strong, be, I, me, help, thanks, love, loving, kind, joy, patient, are, faithful, powerful, self control, great, gentle. Use the nuggets to make prayers or to think about the character of God.

At our last formal Sunday session before the holidays we made some prayer journals that we could use over the summer.  They are very easy to make and our 6-11s got so into making them that it was really hard to tear them away at the end of the session.  We had to load them up with things to take home so they could finish them off! First take 3 envelopes.  Glue the flaps of two of the envelopes and cut the flap off the third. Stick the envelopes together in a line like this... This now makes a fold up journal with pockets to put things in (the children especially love this part!) I made a version of my own to give the children some ideas: Inside the journal with pockets named for the world, me, other people... Inside the journal with things pulled out of the pockets and the folded world map opened up. Inside I put: a folded world map for world prayers, a mini healing board to stick plasters to when praying for people to get better, a little shee...

We noticed how much the children at our school lunchtime club enjoyed using the  prayer chatterboxes  that we had in our portable prayer box, so we decided that today we would let them make their own! We spoke about the spiritual fruit of Love and about how we can show love to others by praying for them- even people we don't like very much!  We then let the children choose people, places or things they wanted to pray about and gave them some blank chatterbox sheets to fill in.  Here are some examples... We then folded the chatterboxes and prayed/ played!  It's really exciting when you find something that engages children in prayer, maybe for the first time :-)

I was thinking about how the children love using the globes and world map to pray for the world and wondering how I could make something big enough for everyone to use at the same time. As I was walking round the pound shop I found a shower curtain and remembered the days of teaching when, if we wanted a really big image, we'd project it onto the wall with an overhead projector. So.. I taped the shower curtain to the wall, made an OHP transparency of a world map outline and projected the map onto the curtain.  In hindsight it would have been much easier if I hadn't taped the quite thin curtain onto a wall with a mural on it.  It got quite confusing when trying to work out what was a line on the map and what was part of Noah's Ark underneath! After about 20 minutes, I'd traced the outline onto the sheet with a permanent marker and it was much bigger than the biggest map we'd used for praying with up to now, though I am a little bit concerned that I might ...

I recently came across chalk board paint for the first time.  Two coats of paint and literally anything can become a chalk board!  It's quite cheap as well, so that's a bonus! We always have a  graffiti board  as one of our Sunday morning prayer stations, but to give us a little bit of a change I've swapped the cardboard for a chalk board.  All I did was paint one of the random bits of hardboard    left over from the building work and now we have a five foot long, reusable board.  The children love using the coloured chalks as well.  It's always good to have some variety in prayer!

This is another child's take on forgiveness and how we can pray for it (words are directly copied from what she wrote!) Sins are bad things that are not good.  Tear off a piece of paper and write something wrong you have done on it.  It might have been recently, it might have been a while ago.  Scrunch it up and God knows you’re sorry  and you know God has forgiven you.

This prayer station is linked to the idea of rockets!  The child who made it explained that most people thought that rockets were quite dangerous things but he wanted us to focus on God keeping us safe.  He built a 'rocket' from a cup and made this prayer station! We can ask God to keep us safe.  Write your name on a peg, pray that God will keep you safe and peg it to the cup .

This prayer station is by the youngest in the group.  It's very simple, but says a lot! Take a plate and draw a smiley face on it.  Pray for people in the world who don’t have enough food.

This is an easy idea to help pray for healing.  Stickers with names on might work better because we found that pens don't easily write on bandage! Pray for people who are ill and ask God to heal them.  Write their name on the bandage.

This is a really considerate station by one of the youngest members of the group... Draw something you like on a piece of paper e.g. One of your toys.  Rip the paper down the middle.  Put one half of the paper on one of the plates and the other half of paper in the other plate .  Ask God to help you share things.

This is another simple but really thoughtful invention by one of our children... There are two plates- one sad and one happy.  Put a gem on the plate that shows how you feel.  Tell God why you are sad or happy.    Say thank you if you are happy.  Ask God to help you if you are sad.

Several of the children decided to make up prayer stations looking at homes.  In this station, person 1 is on the left of the picture and person 2 is on the right. Choose a person and pray for them and their house Person 1- thank God for homes that are safe, warm and comfortable. Person 2- Pray for people who have no homes or whose homes are unsafe and  crowded. 

Here is a station for those who love Lego! Using the Duplo , build a house.  It can be any shape or size.  As you build it, think about people without homes because they have no money or jobs. Pray to God that He’ll give these people houses and a life equal to what we have.