Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Tomorrow I'm going to be talking about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  When I've taught this before, I've focussed on how we come to God in prayer, but this time I'm looking at the idea of grace.  Here's an easy but very visual way to tell and teach the story! You will need: A beautifully wrapped box, a smaller, torn and battered box, a gold bag filled with enough sweets to overflow out of the smaller box. The beautifully wrapped box is like the Pharisee.  He has a lot of things to tell God and others about how good he is.  All his good works are on show for everyone to see.  He wants everyone to notice him for his goodness. The small, battered and torn box is like the tax collector.  People really don't like him.  They think, like this box, that he is like rubbish.  The tears symbolise the things he has done that probably aren't that good. Put the small box at a distance from the wrapped box (make sure that the wrapped box has c...

We are focusing on prayer for the next few weeks with our 3-5s.  This week we want to put across the idea that 'we can talk to God and He listens to us' and we will be using the story of the pharisee and the Tax collector.  To explore the idea of communication, speaking and listening, we're going to use toy microphones, megaphones, telephones, stethoscopes etc.  Here is our craft for this week: a microphone! (It's a bit of a tenuous link,  but we want to use something that young children will recognise as a way of speaking, at the same time as being something fun because the main point is that we encourage them to speak to God!) You will need: A plastic ball pond ball wrapped in foil, a plastic cup, a pipe cleaner, some stickers. Make a hole in the base of the cup and push a pipe cleaner through it and secure.  This makes the microphone 'lead'.   Push the foil covered ball into the top of the cup, where is should become lodged (you may need to experim...