Joint school/church project

You could make these for school or church, I worked with primary school children to learn about church altar frontals and the church seasons. We talked about symbolism and colour and they then came up with designs that they would place on a frontal for the school hall.

I then took these designs to the church embroidery group and they created designs inspired by the ideas of the children and made them up. One is done with rag-rugging, one patchwork and one by padding layers of different material (see photo). 

The children were thrilled that their ideas could be made into such beautiful things and were able to share with the whole school how the process had worked.

Lent or Advent pathway

Lent and Advent are at times when the seasons are changing and in the church they are a time when we try to change/do things differently, we try to work at something or give something up and they lead up to our two most important festivals.

Mark out a simple pathway on large pieces of cardboard. Make hills and valleys along the way to make it look interesting and leave space for children or young people to add their ideas, pictures or models.

Choose activities for each part of the pathway that represent something you would like them to think about e.g. for Lent I had one that represented God’s love is our shelter and the children made tents and placed them on the pathway. For Advent you could have one for each of the themes of Advent Sundays.

Pentecost Kites

At the beginning of a service or in the middle during the adult sermon or out in Sunday groups take three kite shapes, add a ribbon on the bottom, make tails from card.

Each shape has a symbol for Pentecost, a dove, a flame, the wind,. Talk to the children/young people about what the different symbols tell us about the Holy Spirit. Then encourage them to decorate the kites. Finally ask them to write prayers onto the tail ribbons and add to the tails/streamers. Here are two of the prayers  the children wrote.

Heavenly Father, Help us feel your Holy Spirit move and shape our lives....Amen

Fill the leaders of all the countries of the world with a spirit of peace and brotherhood. Amen

You could then take these and place them at the altar.

Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?

If you are anything like me, when you have told your children a bible story you really want them to remember it and hopefully also remember what it has to do with them. An obvious way that most of us do this is by asking the children questions to reinforce the teaching. This is a very small idea to bring a different dimension to asking questions. A die with a question word on each side; Who? What? Why? When? Where? How? The children take turns at rolling the die and either you ask a question using the word they roll or they have to think up the question and ask someone else. Another way is to write the question words on a piece of paper and flick tiddlywinks to chose the question - this can get silly!
Dice available from amazon - link below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Question-Dice-Pack-Five-Where/dp/B007ZQH8XE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382007323&sr=8-2&keywords=question+dice

Heart Bucket Brigade

This book and the others in the series have some great ideas for getting kids listening to God, enjoying being in His presence an expecting to hear from Him. Doesn't need to be limited to kids either. Books are by Mike Seth, children's pastor at Bethel church in California. 

   http://store.ibethel.org/p850/the-heart-bucket-brigade