Holiday Club 2012 (Post 2- Jungle Zoo)

Welcome to Mr Kings Jungle Zoo, walk through the water fall (complete with ambient water fall sounds)

Walk through, look around,

Look up you'll see the the water flowing (fairy lights twinkle to the  sounds of the waterfall)

Ohh, a hive of activity finishing creating the Jungle Zoo! As the jungle plants  hang down to jungle floor

Mr Kings Jungle home

Animal Cages (teams of the children- but these cages were just for the actors playing the animals)

 Look up and around the branches of the tree

 View from up the tree, where the drummer plays

 You've got to be carful in the jungle

The band getting ready around the tree

 Lets go.... The leaves had to be cut a bit to be able to see the screen.

Next instalment, the teams rooms....

Holiday Club 2012 (Post 1- Prep)

So every year the week before term ends for Summer, our little village church clears out the chairs and then becomes a giant creative construction site of prep for Holiday Club which will start the first week of the summer holidays. People give up holiday to construct, build and create; youth come straight after school to help create scenery; meals are provided and people work tirelessly in order to get ready the BIG event that is Holiday Club (Americans- Vacation Bible School). We are so blessed to have such a creative and skilled team, who put into fruition what is the culmination of a few's imagination and prayerful consideration of a theme which will convey some important Bible messages!

This year, was an amazing adventure to Mr King's Jungle Zoo! A Zoo that is situated in the middle of the Jungle, a crazy idea the animals are impressed in their own land!

The Sign for the front of the Church

 Cages (not for children- just actors)

 Can you guess what this could be?...

 ???

A Tree- use some imagination!!

 A jungle hut, where Mr King lives (and hide away for all Audio Visual Equipment)

....More to follow

Lost sheep (shepherd and sheep colour matching)

Over a year ago I posted on alljoinin.blogspot about these sheep and shepherds we have used them for several reasons since, including sheep in matching coloured stockings for christmas (I'll see if I have photos?). But I walked in from from work the other day to find these had been used independently and told "Get your phone out to take a photo of what we've done" if you look carefully you'll see it the red shepherd has in fact lost all his sheep, or put them in a safe place?

There are how to's on all join in for making these dolls and simpler ones also (although they are pirate examples :) 

Lost Stories (2)

Lost sheep story station

Lost son story station

 The father never forgot his son like God never forgets us! A few "remembering" games

 Feed the pigs pods like the son had to - really popular!

 People leave home, come back get lost go to the farm, but God is always with us

 The son had to go an work at a pig farm

 Make cards for friends and family

 Create a welcome sign

 decorate cakes, for a celebration party when the son returns home

 Think of the best and worst jobs in the world - the pig looking aster job was pretty bad

Camel through the eye of a needle

Today's post is actually from the older children's group 6-11 yr olds but I just wanted to share a few fabulous examples of what we made. As usual this craft was only an option but it was seriously well received! 

Today's session was obviously, Matthew 19: 16-26 The Rich Young Ruler, or Camel through the eye of a needle or even what one of the little ones called it "The threading story"

In the older group we also had a who can thread a needle quickest competition. A needle challenge: can the team get a cube of jelly through the eye of a needle? I gave them a cup of cold water that said the world I had a cup of boiling water that said God, they couldn't get the jelly through but I was able to pour mine through because with God all things are possible! (I had planned on using paper camel shapes to get through the eye and myself rice paper and melting in water but couldn't find any)

We did spiders web prayers, taking lengths of string to symbolise something we wanted to pray for that may seem impossible! We put them in the shape of a spiders web then symbolically cut them to say God has herd. 

I will see if I can post the little ones activities another day - I don't have photos at the moment!

Under the Sea- Fishers of Men

For the second session of our Under the Sea Theme junior church series we focussed on Fishers of Men.

The play session worked very well for this session, particularly craft and play dough.

Resources to accompany the play dough were lolly pop sticks, match sticks, gems, goggly eyes, shells and drinking straws. There was no instruction to make fish, other than the first child saying what shall I make and being told "You can make anything you like, you may want to make something relating to what you think we are doing today, but it's up to you?" They looked around the room and made fish, the results were pretty amazing...

Shape punch fish, the children were provided with blue paper cut into A5,  coloured paper, shaped punches. There was an example of a made fish on the table (this is the first week I have provided example crafts, but really engaged the children)

Paper plate fish left over from last session but made available and a few children accessed, good for recapping last session.

Sock fish, these turned out lovely! 

Fish pond fishing biscuits: rich tea, blue icing, s'mores gold fish, pretzel sticks and strawberry laces (the last two items are not on this picture)

Blow up boat in a scene with fishing game. To act out the story, independently or in group time

World twister, to link to Jesus' great commission which we touched on in the group time

Habour scene, was used last session but not accessed so changed to table worked much better.

These crafts were made in response to the story/ group time

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Under the Sea- Story of Jonah

 

So for the next four months for our monthly junior (children's) church we are going with the theme of Under the Sea, focussing on sea related Bible stories starting with Jonah.

Unfortunately didn't get a great photo of how the room looked finished but a work in progress of the ocean creation. Also didn't get photos of all the activities which was a bit disappointing. I just didn't think pre session and can't put pics up of the children doing the activities, but here are a few...

We projected this video with music onto the screen whilst children played.

The big box fish was initially going to be for throwing people bean bags inside but at last minute decided to allow children to decorate as a group project. This was very popular, we did end up playing the game at the end of the session in two teams, we had to move the beads a bit though the glamour fish's jewels just got in the way.

The whale, I had got this idea for a whale on pinterest and was going to create it on the dark den but instead whilst locating dark den in shed noticed the tent, and with some imagination - A WHALE. Complete with squiggly light up fish inside and torches (a luxury Jonah didn't have) This was really popular with all children but particularly the younger ones.

Wooden harbour/ sea set (a bit of a mess and not too popular with this group of children?!)

Icing gingerbread men and then sticking them with icing to a paper plate. I would probably get the children to draw on paper plate with wax crayons before icing if I did this again, but a great activity!

We also made CD fish, Peg whales with opening mouths (I'll make examples of these crafts and put them up on here in the near future)

We also had the insey winsey spider game, because it related to weather storm like in the story.

Blowing plastic boats across tray of water with straw race, because the people on Jonah's boat tried to race to shore.

Barrier game: A barrier was set up on the middle of a table with a set of simple hand drawn pictures on booths sides (different) children took it in turns to follow the instructions- like Jonah got instructions from God if we don't follow things go wrong.

We sang One Way Jesus- Junior Church favourite and Jesus You're my Superhero, I hadn't planned on singing this one but they saw it on my bookmarks and asked very nicely and loudly so I agreed.

I had planned to sing, Who's the king of the jungle as we haven't sung that and thought it related to the story well with regard to Jonah telling the people on the boat that he worshipped the Lord the created of the .... sea (but we didn't actually sing this one :( )

To introduce the story to the group I used this video... and said this reminds me of someone in the Bible who got directions from God so he needn't of got lost but he didn't get lost and a whale ended up coming to his rescue but it was probably a rather scary situation like this one. I'll tell you about it, the man's name was Jonah...

P.s. I seem to find so many links in Finding Nemo to introduce stories, not sure if it's just because I like the film or if there are actually more than average links?