Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Colouring is a really good way to help children to take time to sit and reflect. It also provides a great opportunity for us to chat informally with them about what they think and are learning.  I made these colouring sheets to help children to focus on the words of the Apostles' Creed and they might be especially useful to you if your church says the creed every week!  The creed is quite long (though it's actually one of the shorter creeds!), so it's been split over 3 sheets. Click here to print sheet 1 Click here to print sheet 2 Click here to print sheet 3

Have a look at this guest post by Cathy Porter, all about her new book and then print off and play the memory pairs game she has made! Hi, I’m Cathy. I’m ordained, married to a vicar and mum of three children, 2 of whom are autistic and all of whom tend to be anxious, questioning and inquisitive. We try to explore faith together at home in a hands on, messy, all included, everyday kind of way. So I am often over here gathering new ideas from Flame Creative Kids! I asked Mina if I could let you know about my latest book – ‘So many answers’ -   all about how God always answers prayer. It’s one of those go to books that will help you face the difficult questions and disappointment when your kids can’t see how God has answered, or for the times when he doesn’t give us the answer we hope for. In ‘So many answers’ I open the faith-story with the voice of a child expressing their doubts that God always answers prayer, and gradually explore in a very visual way how we ex...

Last week we went into our local church infant school to run a prayer workshop for each class in celebration of the 'Thy Kingdom Come' 10 days of prayer. This was one of their favourite activities! We got the original idea from the cross in this great post at Easy Breezy Sunday School  and then added a few little twists to it :-) We wanted the children to think about God being a provider (linked to the Lord's prayer and 'give us today our daily bread') and to know that God wants good things for us. My friend Charlotte built an amazing cross out of cardboard tubes of various sizes and spray painted it gold to make it extra special. In each of the tubes we put a sweet and then we asked the children to write or draw their asking prayers on a piece of paper, put it into one of the tubes and take a sweet as a reminder that we can ask God for things and that He wants to give us good things. We have done quite a lot of work with the children at the school and th...

We had a last minute planning situation at our children's group this last Sunday, due to a leader's illness. We were not deterred however!  I got out my Godly play materials to tell the story of the Great pearl and then we had lots of activities to choose from that didn't take a lot of preparation. As most of the children in the group are under 5, it's good when we have a craft that is a bit loose and free flowing and they absolutely love anything to do with food! This craft involved some stuff that I found in my cupboard the night before... You will need: Plain biscuits, icing sugar (made into spreadable icing), sprinkles, cupcake cases, white fondant icing rolled into 'pearls'. Spread some icing on top of the biscuit and then add sprinkles to decorate your 'treasure'. Add a fondant pearl to the top of your treasure biscuit to remember that the pearl was the most special treasure of all.   Finish by covering the biscuit with a cupc...

We hold a monthly Ecumenical Messy Church in the local parish hall- the Church of England, the Methodist Church and the Church of Christ working together, pooling our resources and building relationships! Messy Church has proved to be really popular with our local non-church families and this month we explored the story of the Good Samaritan. Here's what we got up to... 'Plaster' biscuits (biscuits, fondant and strawberry jam!) Wool friendship bracelets Playing with a toy doctor's kit and lots of bandages! Pin the Good samaritan on the donkey Thinking about people we have helped and those who have helped us Colouring and acting out the story with stick puppets We then told the story with oranges and bananas  (check out the link here )... ...and then ended by thanking God for the people who help us and sticking plasters to ourselves to remind us to be people who help others :-)

For those of you who have followed this blog over a period of time, you will probably know that last month saw the publication of my first book.  I am so excited about it! The book looks amazing and has loads of ideas for helping you to introduce Holy Communion to under 5s.  There are play sessions for Creche areas, sessions for more formal children's church settings and ideas for when you have no children's groups at all. There is also a section for what families can do at home to explore the main themes. What is extra great about this book is that it comes with downloadable and printable material.  To give you a taster, here is one of the play dough mats that links with a session exploring what it means to be part of God's big family.   To print click here You can buy the book here (overseas postage is available) or on Kindle here. Have fun!

For those of you who are looking ahead and planning for Ascension day then this is for you- but even if you're not, this is a great activity to help children think about giving their prayers to God!   This appears as one of the crafts in last month's Premier Youth and Children's Work magazine, which is amazing always worth a read :-) You will need: A plastic bottle or glass jar, water, vegetable oil, food colouring, Alka seltzer tablets Fill a bottle or jar halfway full with water and mix in some food colouring.  Now fill the rest of the bottle with oil, leaving a small space at the top.  The oil will separate from the water into a separate layer.  Drop an Alka Seltzer tablet (or try a quarter or half at a time if they are large tablets) into the bottle and watch as bubbles of coloured water start to ascend into the oil layer in the style of a mini lava lamp!   Talk: Watch the bubbles rising and thin...