Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

Having found the M & M Christmas poem on Pinterest this year, we couldn't resist using it at Messy church!  After using pictures to tell the Nativity story, we brought out our giant M&M... We gave everyone a normal m&m of their own and acted out the poem by turning it round to make an E (for the East), a 3 (wise men), an M (manger) and a W (worship|).  We used the big M&M at the front to demonstrate!  Please check out the link above to see our source for the poem. We then latched onto the idea of the wise men following the star to find the true meaning of Christmas.  We asked people to think of those who don't really know what Christmas is about and who will be sad, lonely or ill this Christmas.  We then asked God to help us shine like stars to show them the joy of Christmas.  As a symbol of this, people were then invited to come and get a star and lay it out on the chancel steps.  As you can see, one of the children was ...

This is a lovely way to use up some Nativity style Christmas cards or to make us of Nativity themed pictures that children have drawn!  Every time the children play with the snow globe, it will remind them of part of the Christmas story. You will need: A clean jam jar and lid (labels removed), sticky dots or strong glue, glitter (the finer the flakes of the glitter the better as bigger glitter flakes can clump- I used white for a more snowy effect), a laminated piece of Nativity related Christmas card that will fit inside the jam jar, water, glycerine (optional) Laminate your piece of Christmas card and leave a border at the bottom that you can bend to make a 'stand'.  Because I was curving my picture, I also cut a slit in the stand to help it curve round.  Stick glue dots or strong glue on the bottom of the stand piece.  Sick the card onto the lid (about the middle of the lid works quite well rather than right at the edge).  Put a teaspoon ...

As we're now half way through November, I've given in to Christmas!  Here is a prayer craft to help children think about finding Jesus at Christmas... Cut some star shapes out of card.  Choose two stars.  On Star 1, make a cut from the bottom of the star to the middle and on Star 2, make a cut from the top of the star to the middle (as shown above).  Punch a hole in the top of the star 1.  Colour or decorate the stars and tie a loop of string through the hole in star 1.  Fit both stars together (using the slits) to make a 3D effect star. Talk to the children about the star in the Nativity story and how its brightness helped the wise men to find Jesus, God's special gift to us.  Pray for anyone you would like God to bless over Christmas.  Pray that they will have a special time and that they will really know that God loves them.  Write their names on the star or stick their initials on stickers to put on the star.  Ol...

This is a talk that can be easily used in an assembly or for an all age service and focuses on the idea of Jesus being an unexpected gift. You will need: 4 items to wrap as gifts.  One should be really easy to guess (e.g. a book), a couple should be quite difficult to guess (I used sunglasses and a duck shaped door stop!) and one should be an ordinary looking, quite boring container with chocolate coins hidden inside. Ask children what their favourite thing about Christmas is.  Gifts are bound to come up! Talk about why we give gifts- to show people that we love them and care for them.  Ask some of the children to try and guess what is wrapped up in your gifts.  Start with the easy to guess gift, proceed onto the harder to guess gifts and end with the box containing chocolate coins.  Each time, after guesses have been made, reveal what the gift is.   Explain that sometimes we know immediately what we've been given but sometimes it's harder to work it...

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!

I know that this is a bit early for Christmas, but I've been thinking about ideas for Easter and was wondering how I could adapt this idea that worked well in Advent! We do a lunch time club in one of the local schools on a Thursday and, when we were making recycled Christmas cards, we discovered that the children were absolutely fascinated with the Nativity scenes and wanted to take the spare cards home with them! I wanted an interactive way of telling the Nativity story, as the group can be a bit lively so I decided that we would use some of the left over cards. You will need: Christmas cards showing 1) the shepherds, 2) the Wise Men, 3)The angels, 4) a Bethlehem scene, 5) a scene where Mary and Joseph and Jesus or a combination of characters are in the stable, 6) possibly a 'peace on Earth' card A chocolate bar Newspaper or wrapping paper and sellotape CD player and music In the centre parcel wrap the stable scene and the chocolate.  In the oth...

I always keep my Nativity themed Christmas cards because the children, especially at our school lunchtime club, love to look at them and talk about the Nativity story. I learned to make boxes out of cards a few years ago and I often make boxes out of my Christmas cards and put little gifts in them.  It struck me that if I made 25 boxes, I could turn them into an Advent Calendar that could contain sweets or little gifts for each day but would be very rooted in the Nativity story and would provoke thoughts each day about the characters portrayed on each box.  Here's how I made it if you fancy having a go yourself!  Collect last year's Christmas cards (Nativity themed only!)  Separate the front and back of the cards.  The front will be the top of your box and the back will be the bottom of the box.  Slightly trim the back piece along one length and one width so it is a tiny bit smaller than the front piece.  With a ruler or length of card,...

Advent is nearly here and Christmas is coming!  Here are my top 10 ideas from the Flame archive to help you with your preparations... Printable Nativity Character Prayer Cards Jesse Tree Advent Journey Play Dough Mat Emmanuel Reflective Colouring Sheet 24 Things to do in Advent: Printable Booklet for Families Nativity Story Bag Advent Hope Ribbon Prayer Christmas Card Snow Globes Nativity Discovery Box for Under 5s Nativity Story Cube (Full Colour or Colour-in versions)

We came across these brilliant foam nativity stickers  at Baker Ross and got some for Messy Church.   However, I made a slight miscalculation with the order and ended up with some extra!  We used our extra stickers for the children at our school lunchtime club to make Christmas cards with.  We're having a Christmas sale to raise money for Fair Trade and cards seemed an easy thing to make to sell! Using the stickers gave us a great opportunity to discuss the characters in the Nativity story and for the children to think of how they could communicate certain parts of the story on their cards.  Here are some of the results (we tried to keep to the  rule of no more than 3 characters plus a star per card!)

Here are the crafts from our Christmas Messy Church yesterday- all Nativity story based! Baby Jesus manger biscuits  Christmas cards with Nativity foam stickers from Baker Ross  Nativity stencil pictures  Wise men hats  Nativity themed baby area Shiny star tree ornaments  Candy Cane Shepherds Shaving foam snow   Nativity sticker puppets Paper plate angels