Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

In the joy of Christmas it often feels like bursting a bubble to remember Herod's slaughter of the children but, sometimes, it's fitting to acknowledge the difficult and uncomfortable parts of the Bible. This year, we used the opportunity to think about those people across the world who are suffering and in despair, and to stand alongside them in their tears, even as we were still in the midst of celebrating Christmas. Obviously this is a subject that needs to be handled sensitively and with knowledge of individual life situations if at all possible. As part of an all age service we spoke about loss and sorrow and sometimes having to ask where God is in a situation. We also remembered that Jesus, the hope and light of the world was not extinguished, even in this despair. As a craft activity we invited people to make teardrop sun catchers from tissue paper and sticky back plastic. Our prayers focussed on those people and places we knew who were suffering, with each person adding...

 We are gearing up for Epiphany on Sunday and have a great all age service planned. At the side of church, for those who want to be a bit hands on, we have a few crafts ready and this new craft will be one of them. This craft is really effective but will need some help for very young hands. You will need:    3 x A6 size yellow/orange  paper, scissors, glue, 2 lolly sticks. Start at the short end one of the pieces of paper and make concertina folds all the way down. You should now have 3 concertina-ed papers. Snip the ends off of each concertina, as shown in the photo. Fold each concertina in half. Open out and glue together the bits of paper closest to the fold line. This will make your concertina into a fan. Glue the three fans together as shown. You will now have a large fan! Let the glue dry for a moment. Squeeze the fan shut and point it with the snipped ends downward. Glue lolly sticks to each side of the fan as shown here. Wait for the glue to dry. Hold on to t...

As part of our all age carol service today we had a creation station, and one of the activities was to make a host of angels. Adults and children took part at any point in the service they wanted to and we ended up with a great display. This was easy enough for even the youngest children to do and was very popular.  Indeed, it was more popular than I imagined it would be and I got into trouble when we ran out of pieces and had to improvise! You will need: A5 pieces of coloured paper or card, triangles slightly less tall and wide than A5, small triangles for wings, small circles for heads, glue sticks Stick the 'wings' point down, somewhere about 1/3 of a page down from the top of the card. Stick the large triangle over the top and add a circle for a head. As you can see, some chose also to add faces and speech! As they were being made, we gathered the angels together and created a heavenly host for the congregation to see :-) 

On Sunday we are holding our all age carol service and one of the activities will be Christmas story bingo. Anyone who wants to participate can take a sheet as they come in and can then cross off every word on their sheet that they hear in the readings, talk and carols. There are 10 different word sheets and, for young children who can't yet read, there are 6 different picture sheets. If people are paying attention there will, of course, be multiple winners who have crossed off all of the words at the same time, but that's part of the fun! Click here to print off the Christmas story word bingo. Click here to cross off the Christmas story picture bingo. When I printed the sheets off, I printed 4 to an A4 page, but go with whichever size works best for you!

An agamograph is a piece of artwork that changes as the viewer shifts perspective. Basically there are two different pictures and you see a different one depending on how you are looking at the piece.  This is a special agamograph for Christmas! There are 2 original pictures- a star and an angel: Click here to print off the colour in sheet Colour the sheet in Score along each of the vertical lines so that it will be easier to fold along the lines Concertina the picture, folding along the vertical lines Open the picture up slightly and try viewing it from different angles

This Sunday we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath and began looking forward to Christmas. If lighting the candles week by week in Advent is part of your tradition, then you might enjoy this printable reflective colouring sheet. Click here to print off your copy and have a great Advent!