Paul Shipwrecked

This week following on from a mini series of sessions for the relating to the life of Paul starting a month ago at the last Children's Church. I don't believe I have posted that session due to camera issues.

Play

 The pallet boat/ shipwreck formed the main focus of the room, and later allowed us to tell the story through drama including the children. During the play session, the children decorated the wood pallet with pens and played with the scene. The main writing on the pallet read "The good ship sinker and peace maker"

Shipwrecked Scene using the wonderful tuff stop/ builders tray containing sand, blue fabric and playmobil shipwreck (added wooden people also)

Play with wooden harbour set that I have used for many water story and is great for linking bible stories to modern situations/ experiences.

Sensory

Water and boats (small people were added)

 Alongside the boats blueish jelly with snakes and sea creatures in it. (Snakes relating to the snake that bit Paul on the island of Malta)

Craft:

 Tights???? 

For more snakes of course

 Playdough to make snakes (and whatever else but once one person starts the others follow) And I do believe we had some rather beautiful snakes this week.

 The play dough invitations to play are always so very popular that I am trying to put a play dough activity every session.

 Wooden boats, although these were not fully able to be undertaken by the children they were popular and children enjoyed decorating them. Because they were able to float they provided great opportunity to follow up story at home. (I will see if I can find some pictures of completed boats)

Food: (always a food activity- always popular)

Biscuits, with icing with brown sugar for sand, flapjack ship, cocktail stick with tape for sail and of course a jelly baby for Paul

We did not have a game this session, we were going to have snakes and ladders but unfortunately were unable to find one :(

Esther The Superhero

Today's session at Junior Church we looked at Esther, here are some of the activities...

Royal play dough faces

 Cardboard tube Kings, queens and castles

a blurry picture but hopefully you can get the idea

 

Plastic bottle crown pots (again not great pic- sorry)

 Super hero/ Royal capes

Decorating the castle walls (the walls were covered with brown paper outside the entrance with a turret and a fake draw bridge. To enter children could only get in by crawling into the door and entering in though the castle which was made from card into the room (big enough to comfortably fit about 8 children and adult in) then of course a door into the main room and the other activities.

Mmmm... what are these? They are gingerbread men decorated in their royal finery :)

Other activities include:

Making lego castle

Taking turns to put wooden block castle without it falling

Wooden castle and people

Happy land castle

Dressing up - including royal clothing (not very popular)

To introduce the story we used this short video which was really well received

 Esther Video on Youtube by Tailrace Kids

I then began to tell the story and ended up handing over to two wonderful 9 and 10 year olds to competently tell the story and all the children listened brilliantly. We had some giggly crazy moments but I've been told even the youngest children could tell the story back to parents!

We then thought about Esther's super hero powers which we decided were bravery and courage, which she used to help people. How could we be brave and help people this week?....

Toy Story Junior Church (friends of Jesus-Mary, Martha and Lazarus)

 That's it folks, until next (this) month, when we are doing Mr Potato Head (The Body of Christ.

Junior Church Format

I have blogged about Junior Church/ Children's Church on many occasions but don't think I have ever written the order of the session any where! So I thought I'd take this opportunity to do so. The times are variable and a very rough guide, we move times/ adapt to the needs of the group and each session.

The Fall Genesis 3

This week we did The Fall in Children's Church and these are our activities. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.  

These are examples of the cards on each station and give an idea of the thinking behind providing that activity, again a big thank you to Dapto Messy Church for their original idea of cards.