Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Here is our second prayer bag for children to take home.  Like the Family prayer bag for 3-7s , this bag has ideas that families can use to pray at home and each one will only take a few minutes.  This bag also takes into account that the children of this age group will be more used to our prayer routines and may want to do some  things independently!  All bags will be ready to give out in the next couple of weeks, but why not try some of the ideas at home before they arrive... B ubbles C ounters (card squares) Laminated  3 in a row prayer game (to print out click here  ) Laminated w orld map Spot s tickers Journal notebook Felt tip Prayer chatterbox (to print out click here ) Post its  'Sorry'  acetate Bubble prayers Say thank you or sorry to God or ask Him to help you.  At the end of your prayer, blow some bubbles as a sign of your prayers going up to God. Prayer journals Use the notebook to write and draw your ...

Here is the second origami chatterbox I've made.  This one is to help children reflect on prayer and God.  Under the flaps are questions they have to answer... A printable version can be found  here .

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 :-)

Last week at Powersource we made origami chatterboxes (also known as fortune tellers!) as a fun activity.  The children love them and it started me thinking about how we could use them for prayer.  So here is the first of two ideas... This needs to be done in groups of 2 or 3.  When children have chosen their colour and number, their partner lifts the flap to see what they have to pray for:   Please, thanks, sorry, friends, family.  Sorry prayers can be said silently and finished with a spoken Amen so that we know it's time to swap turns! A printable version can be found  here .