Light Show

Further to last post thought I would add this wonderful light toy that is designed for under water e.g. in the bath, but works equally well outside. It can be used for exploration of for themes e.g. light, stars etc.

It projects well onto ceiling and walls but even better onto close surfaces e.g. an umbrella or chiffon or indeed both as in one of the photos. I placed it in a large shiny Ikea fruit dish that reflected well.

It can be purchased from specialist SEN retailers or ebay and Amazon, search around under the heading "under water light show"  the vary in price from £5-£50 (depending on size/ amount of light sequences/ or just difference)

Here is a link to the one featured here (possibly not the same retailer)

Baby Bible Book (Quiet Book)

 I'm making these for my God daughter, Im hoping her mum isn't going to be looking at the blog for a while!  Each page will have a simple interactive element. I plan to make several pages and join them with ribbons or baby rings?

Creation: Fish moves along the sea.

Jonah: Jonah can go in and out of fish's bout attached to ribbon.

God made sunshine (Psalm 19)

Using the Godly creation cards I told a very short version without wondering questions. Then move the sun / moon down and said "a long, long time after God made everything, people wrote songs called psalms, one of these is about how wonderful God made the sauna and everything."  Then I created the bigger card below with cards/ glow stars/ touch light. I created/ pointed to the corresponding points to the psalm paraphrase below.

We then sang sunshine related songs.

Paper plate prayers, each child was given a paper plate, a biscuit and five stick pretzels. We each created a sun (most looked like the sun rising or falling) and said a a prayer saying saying thank you for the sun and each of us. If did this again i would say five thank you prayers counting the sticks, with children choosing what they are thankful for.

You know that I am not a fan of "production line crafts" but on this occasion I actually decided I would give the children a range of collage materials, paint sticks, and crayons, and they all with significant concentration created their own sunshine. Happily they were all different, most looking like a sunrise or sunset but a couple of flu rays ones like one on left, one with no rays (which I was told "This one is not going to have rays") we even has a sunshine rabbit- which if you look at the next post you will see the link!

Creation Stations

For session one of Bible Boot Camp, Creation was the theme. There were a range of "Creation Stations" to represent each of the days of creation.

The children were free to explore each station without explanation as to what they meant- only later after some time of thinking and a bit of detective work did they think what all the stations together may mean. Later confirmed by a talk on creation.

Dark den with lights and glow sticks to put inside. The dark den in completely dark when inside so makes a perfect for the start of creation- generally children don't experience true darkness so a new and exciting experience.

Overhead Projector (Old school OHP- from primary school days. Such a great creative resource) A range of creative resources to project creative images onto the wall.

Popcorn maker- we found there were lots of different reasons that this could have related to creation. Here I have suggested they were clouds.

Water tray on a "waterfall" (humour me), I didn't have an image of the water without additional resources.

A plasma ball for the sunshine.

The OHP used to create a sun.

Soil in trays on land coloured fabric, and herbs, and replica plants.

Seeds to plant in little pots.

Whilst this wasn't an animal station plastic animals were added to add interest.

Water play with birds and fish. In the far corner you can see a fabric bird that makes realistic sounds (and is very annoying when continually activated)

Sea creatures and birds (well mostly ducks)

Fishing game

Animals on a creative mountainous scene.

Playdough people.

Making Gingerbread people.

Resources to make people (or monsters as the case turned out??) out of dolly pegs and wooden spoons.

Click on the link for more ideas of activities that support the the theme of "God Made Me"

God rested...

For more multi sensory ideas go to alljoin.net

Creation Cards

I painted a set of the creation cards out of wood sometime ago, which I have yet to saw out of the large sheet of wood it is currently on. In the next few days I will be going to Romania on a short trip, to serve Outstretched Hands of Romania and I was considering possible talks for children's ministry, when I thought Godly play would actually be quite a good starting point! So thought of making a little light travel set of a few stories and with regard to Creation looked up images and came across a nice example at United Montessori.

Making them out of felt and planning to use them as a travel set I thought joining them with a ribbon with buttons on the end would work well (I believe it did). I simply sewed a button on each end of a ribbon, then cut a little slit in each of the sheets, that way I am able to take each one off and use individually in a line as is meant to be used.

But equally it can be used as a book.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 1 - 7