Children's Church: St. Patrick's Day

I started this fairly regular feature to share what I've compiled (mostly from Pinterest) with other Sunday school teachers. Find other similar posts here and see more ideas on my Sunday school Pinterest board.

I started this lesson of with a brief telling of the story of St. Patrick.  I had seen the cutest St. Patrick's story bag idea at "Rhythm of the Home." That inspired me to bust out Max's pirate ship and a peg doll so I could act out what happened to him.

Sorry for all the blurry pics. My camera has not been the same since it was hit by a basketball...

Patricus (his Latin name) was kidnapped by pirates and carried to Ireland at age 16. He remained a slave there for many years.  I wrapped a chain (a broken necklace) around the peg doll at this point. After six years, he escaped (removed chain) and went back home (I took the pirate flag off and told the kids he got on a "nice ship" to sail back home). There, he became a priest, but had a heart for the people he had lived among as a young man. So, he went back to the place that probably had a lot of bad memories for him and preached the word of God. I gave my tiny Patricus a little tiny shamrock to use as a prop to teach people about the Trinity.

To split the kids into groups, I had them all line up and grab a pretzel shamrock treat.

These were made from a combination of two ideas: this one from "That's What Che Said" and this larger one from "Visiting Teaching Pinspiration." I used three mini pretzels and three mini Rolos. I melted the Rolos on the pretzels in a 200 degree oven for about two minutes. Then, I smooshed green M&Ms onto each Rolo, popped the pan in the freezer for a few minutes and they were hardened! (Sidenote: If you give up sweets for Lent, don't make these. It's torture! Also, it seems immoral to wipe perfectly good chocolate off your fingers!) I had bought a bag of mint M&Ms, so my shamrocks were three different shades of green. I had my kiddos grab a shamrock, then told them partner up with people who shared their color. Two color groups went to the craft table, where they made shamrocks. The largest color group went with me, where we talked about Lucky Charms marshmallows.

Shamrock Craft:

Before we divided, I had showed them my shamrock craft sample. We had already discussed God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit, who lives in us. I showed them how to make the craft, inspired from this one I found on Pinterest by "Bible Story Printables." I had precut a bunch of hearts out of cute green scrapbook papers and punched holes in their point.

All they had to do was write on each heart, cut a stem, and stick a brass brad through all four pieces. I explained how they were separate, but the same (a concept that I can't wrap my own brain around, but I guess that shows how incomprehensible God really is). And when you fold it all up, it makes the shape of a heart, so I quoted 1 John 4:8, "God is love."

Lucky Charms:

Isn't it funny how most "holy"days have been hijacked by cute little characters? What in the world does a leprechaun and a pot of gold have to do with a priest who taught his former slave holders about God?! Anyway, we briefly discussed the real meaning of several holidays and the cute characters that are fun, but easy to get distracted by. Then, I gave each kid a coffee filter (my favorite snack container!) full of Lucky Charms cereal. I told them they could eat the cereal pieces, but they had to leave each type of marshmallow until we'd discussed the shape. Then, they were fair game. I had them find each marshmallow one by one and tell one way that we could make these silly "charms" represent something more important. The kids came up with some things I hadn't even though of - some really deep! I told them what I had written down, including a Bible verse for each one, but applauded their own creativity. Here's what was on the hand-out I made for them to take home afterwards. Most of these came from this post on "This is Katie's Life."

I didn't know about horseshoes and "gold" when I made the hand-out.

rainbow - a symbol that God keeps his promises - Genesis 9:12-13
balloon - God LIFTS our burdens! - Psalm 55:22
heart - God is abounding in love! - Exodus 34:6
star - He is SO big, not only can he count the stars, but he names them, too! - Psalm 147:4-5
moon - Our sorrow only lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning! - Psalm 30:5
clover - a reminder of the Trinity - Matthew 28:19
horseshoe - We should shod our feet with the gospel of peace. - Ephesians 6:15
gold - God's wisdom is more valuable than gold. - Proverbs 8:10

I learned from the back of the box that the gold is actually an hourglass. Oops. The kids came up with all sorts of great connections. God is bigger than time. God has always been. God invented time. God wants to spend time with us. I'm sure you could find a great verse to go with one of those concepts, too.

Children's Church: Lent

I've been posting Sunday school ideas each week in case there are other teachers out there in need of ideas. Check out others here.

I won't be teaching this lesson on Ash Wednesday, but on the Sunday afterward, but I thought I'd post it early in case anyone was scrounging for Wednesday night ideas. Not all of my kids will have even heard of Lent, but I think getting them thinking about Easter and its importance can only be a good thing. 

First, I'll give the kids four different colored papers with Easter verses on them. While I teach the lesson, they'll be cutting the papers into strips and taping them in order to make a scripture chain. Each link of the chain has a verse about Jesus' last days on earth, death, or resurrection. They'll remove and read one a day. There are 43 links, which will get them from the Sunday after Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. The links are numbered, but I split them among four pages and printed them on different colored paper, so the chain will have a cute pattern.  I've attached the pdf version of the scripture chain.  

 

While they cut and tape their little hearts out, I'll introduce the kids to Lent with a quick Prezi I made. Embedded in it are three short video clips about Jesus in the desert. I've posted two of them here in case the Prezi doesn't work. The third one was a Lego stop-motion animation narrated by a kid, but I couldn't get it to embed here for some reason. 

Then, I'll tell them the story of the pretzel. Basically, some monks had given up milk and eggs for the Lenten season. They made a special bread with water, flour, and salt. Then, one monk took the dough and shaped it into the traditional pretzel shape to represent arms folded in prayer, the way people prayed in those days (hands crossed over chest) After learning the history of pretzels, we eat them!

Children's Church: Job and Suffering in the World

I've kept up with this feature for a few Sundays now. I'm on a roll! It's to help Sunday school teachers out there who are looking for ideas like I always am. Check out other ideas here.

Job is a tough subject to tackle! But God included his story in His Word and it was in my ABC curriculum, so I thought I'd take a stab at it.

First, I had the kids taste a little pinch each of flour, baking powder, salt, and shortening.

The boy who never smiles for the camera couldn't stop smiling long enough to make a "yucky" face for me. Grrr!

They weren't impressed when I told them we were going to make something out of those ingredients. I led them through this recipe without telling them what they were making:

Clabber Girl Biscuits

- 2 c  flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 c shortening
- 3/4 c milk
- butter/jelly

1) Mix dry ingredients.
2) Cut in shortening with fork.
3) Add milk and blend lightly with fork until flour is moistened.
4) Knead lightly for 30 seconds.
5) Roll out (we just mooshed out on foil with our fingers) and cut out with round cookie cutter or cup rim.
6) Place on a lightly-greased pan. Brush tops with butter (we skipped this step, but I wish we hadn't).
7) Bake at 475 degrees for 12-15 mn.

I had pre-measured ingredients and put them in baggies to save time. I had three sets of ingredients, 3 bowls/pans/etc. and divided the kids into three tables. After we cleaned up our gargantuan mess (holy cow!) and while the biscuits baked, I led them through the story of Job. I used peg dolls and plastic animals to "act" it out. They got a kick out of it.

Job had a wife, 7 sons, 3 daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 donkeys, and many servants.

We had to use our imagination on the animals just a little...

(My peg dolls were unfinished, but I'd love to make some of these from Watkins Every Flavor Beans blog. How cute are they!?)

We read Job 1: 2,3 and 6-12 and talked about how Job feared God and how Satan was "roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it" (that, in itself, is a lesson) and how Satan said that Job only feared God because he had been blessed. Then, we discussed all of the horrible things that happened to Job in 1:14-19 and 2:7. I knocked over the animals and Job's kids when they died. I put a band-aid on Job when he was infected with boils. Then, we read Job's responses in 1:20-22 and 2:9-10. We discussed how hard that would be, but how Job knew that God was sovereign (one of the words on our "characteristics of God" poster).

Then I briefly summarized what his wife and friends said to Job, and how their advice was wrong, but Job talked to God. He asked God "WHY?" and God more or less said, "I am God! Who are you?" That's hard to hear! But God restored Job's health, wealth, and a new family to him and he "blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning." I pulled out new animals and children and pulled the band-aid off of Job. Then I told them that people are still reading Job and gaining insight and encouragement from it today. So maybe God knew what he was doing all along.

Then, we sampled our biscuits. I added jelly on top. We compared the individual ingredients to the finished product. We talked about how sometime, life on this fallen earth stinks! And until Jesus returns and creates a new earth, there will always be suffering in this world. Then, we read Romans 8:28 and talked about how not all things on earth are good, but God can use all things for good. And sometimes he adds a little jelly to our lives, too.

Children's Church: Confusion - Tower of Babel

This regular (ha! We'll see...) feature is for Sunday school mamas like me who are easily distracted, especially by Pinterest (a.k.a. The Evil One) and want to see ideas for children's church organized by topic. Check out other topics here.

I love how my ABC curriculum summarizes the history of the world with the 7 C's:

Creation
Corruption (the fall)
Catastrophe (flood)
Confusion (Babel)
Christ (Christmas)
Cross (Easter)
Consummation (end of Earth)

This lesson took two weeks and focused on the fourth "C" - confusion.

First, I gave the kids cards that said "hello" in different languages. They had to find someone with the same language as them, then divide into two groups. Each group then raced to stack coffee cups. Each cup had words from our recent memory verse.  I've seen this done where you write on the lip and stack the cups inside each other like this picture, found at When You Rise.

For this lesson, I wanted a tall tower, though, so I wrote on the body of the cup and had the kids stack top to top and bottom to bottom. I had to alternate writing words right side up and upside down to get it to be readable after it was stacked. The tower looked like this picture, found at The Educators' Spin on it. 

After this, I had the kids build a tower, like this one from Wisconsin Country Mom, only with toothpicks and marshmallows.

I explained in detail how to build a square base, but I gave the next set of instructions in gibberish. I acted really frustrated with them when they didn't understand me, repeating the nonsense words over and over. Of course that led to the story of the Tower of Babel.

We briefly talked about how people groups became separated from one another and over time lost genetic material and had more similar features, like eye color, amount of melanin in skin, hair, etc. We read Acts 17:26-27 and talked about how scientists have mapped the human genome and discovered that there really is only one race. Science confirms the Bible! This also led to a discussion about treating people equal and not judging someone by their physical features. We finished with this craft:

My sample to show the kids what to do

Calvin's finished product. Reed was so meticulous, he didn't finish at church and I'm sure his paper is currently hiding with 1.000 other unfinished-because-I'm-a-perfectionist projects. I wish I could find it, because it was adorable!

 I drew a globe and wrote Acts 17:26a around the edges (I totally would have typed and printed, but my printer was - and still is, months later - not working). Then I gave each kid a baby wipe and spread out ink pads in different flesh colors. The kids were supposed to stamp around the world, wiping their finger clean between colors. Then, they had markers to draw on hair, faces, and bodies. As we worked, I would point out different features, "Oh! Reed put freckles on one of his people. I think freckles are so cute!... Don't forget different eye shapes too. My friend Ann is Korean and has the most beautiful almond-shaped eyes...You could draw people with disabilities. God loves people in wheelchairs too. It's a good thing they'll be no more wheelchairs in heaven, though. Why do we have wheelchairs on earth?..." I thought they'd either rush through it or get bored with the craft before our time was up, but they were almost all very intently working - some even after church dismissed.

Children's Church: Catastrophe - the Flood

If you teach Sunday school or children's church, these Sunday posts are for you. I get so distracted when I look for ideas! So, I thought compiling ideas by topic might be helpful for others--plus it helps me clean up one of my Pinterest boards! Check out other ideas here.

I've been following the Answers Bible Curriculum. It goes through the Bible in chronological order with a strong apologetics component. It has great info, but I've started to supplement with more hands-on activities. Several months ago, I taught several lessons on the flood. I think it's one of the biggest scientific answers to the millions of years interpretation a lot of people come up with when they look at layers of the earth, the fossil record, canyons, continental drift, etc. I wanted to make sure my Sunday school kiddos really saw the flood as a historical event, not just a cute little story. Here are a few of the activities we did over several weeks. 

- Edible ark - the kids built an ark out of graham crackers and filled it with animal crackers. I wish I would've had frosting or peanut butter to aid in construction.  (inspired by a similar snack found at the Easy Preschool Craft blog) 

- Sorting plastic animals into "kinds" - The boys have two massive tubs of animals. I dumped them all out and had groups sort them into similar species. Then we read Genesis 6:20 discussed that Noah wouldn't have had to take as many animals as some people may think. For example, he wouldn't have had to take two horses, zebras, and mules, just two from that kind. The variety in their DNA allowed for many different species to result as the repopulated after the flood. I made sure to include dinosaurs too, to emphasize that Noah would have taken dinosaur kinds. 

- Comparing plastic animals of different sizes; particularly dinosaurs. We discussed that Noah might have taken the babies, because they'd be smaller, live longer, sleep more, and eat less. I shared with them that even the largest dinosaur eggs we've discovered are only about one foot long, so even big dinos started out small.
- Pouring water into a "world" in a pan high enough to cover tall rocks and showing that shorter rocks are covered. This helps kids see why, if the Bible is true, Noah's flood had to be global because it says the highest mountains were covered. 
- Reading the ark dimensions from the Bible. (11 1/2 school buses long and four school buses high) and then analyzing depictions of the ark as realistic or not (I made a slide show of cartoon-y and realistic pictures and had the kids label them as reasonable or ridiculous)
- Fingerprint rainbows  (sorry - can't credit this source - it was a just a pinned photo)

- Discussed how rapid burial is necessary for fossils to form and that the flood would have quickly buried billions of creatures. 
- Fossil cookies (inspired by these from Martha Stewart)

- Fossil necklaces (similar to these from Vintage Paper Moon, though ours didn't turn out nearly as cute) - I used bake-dry clay. The kids cut it into circles or rectangles (with a letter "i" cookie cutter) and punched a hole in it before I baked it and strung it on ball-chain with a large jump ring.

Children's Church: Valentine's Day Love

I've been teaching children's church for over a year now, and in that time, I've come to an even deeper love of Pinterest and homeschool mom/sunday school blogs. I need me some ideas! So, I thought it might be fun to post some of the ideas I've collected here, in case there's another Sunday school teacher out there in need of inspiration. I'll start with a Valentine's themed lesson.

Valentine's Centers:

1) Snack and lesson with me

While the kids munch on this yumminess:

Valentine's Day Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow from Life, Love, and Sugar (I added heart-shaped sprinkled to the chow)

... I lead them through a discussion of God's love using conversation hearts. This lesson was inspired by a pin that only led to a photo, so I can't credit it. I cut out pastel-colored hearts and wrote a typical conversation heart saying on one side and a corresponding Bible verse on the other. We discuss different kinds of love on earth. Then, the kids each got a heart to read to the group and we discussed how God's love is unbeatable. They get a pack of conversation hearts as I send them to the next station and encourage them to "Have a conversation with God."

Be Mine  - John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

All Mine - John 10:29b "...no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand."

True Love - Jeremiah 31:3 "The Lord appeared in the past, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness."

Love Me - Luke 10:27 "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Be True - John 14:15  "If you love me, you will obey what I command."

I'm Sure - John 14:1-2 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."

Sweet Talk - Psalm 119:103 "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"

Cutie Pie - Psalm 139:13-14 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well."

Call Me - Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

2) Valentine Puzzle

Since Miss Pam first sent this cute message home on Reed's first Valentine's Day, I've seen this same idea used 1,000 times. I turned it into a riddle for the kids. They had to look up John 3:16 (or recite it from memory) and fill in blanks to reveal the secret words. I used an outline font and added hearts to color to help fill time at this quick center. My printer is sketchy and so are my hearts, but kids are easy to please, so it'll work.

3) Handprint Heart craft

Here, I employ my awesome big kids (my group ranges from four-year-olds to seventh graders, with an occasional high school helper) to paint hands for me. First, kids write a verse or message (or color a design) along a penciled heart. After they erase the pencil line, each hand gets painted a different color to be stamped into a heart shape. Then they report straight to the bathroom to wash up (and hopefully not trash the sink!) If they need to kill time, stencils and heart-shaped hole punches let them add more embellishments.

Handprint heart idea from Decorating by Day




Check out other children's church ideas here.