Nature of God: Grace

11 children

1.   Icebreaker Game – Piggy in the middle!
kids in a circle, just have to throw a ball over somebody in the middle….

2         Competitive Game – The Winner!

racing game or similar, but the LOOSER is awarded the prize (medal)

At the end of the race the medal wen to the looser! We discussed how fair that feeled, and tried to map this to Gods grace, wrt we are given it even though  we don’t deserve it

3         Video - I DON'T WANT YOU!

 

Toy Story 1: from 24:49 – 30:05

Woody has been Andy's favourite toy but Andy has just been given Buzz Lightyear and he is the new favourite! Woody can't come to terms with not being number one and he succeeds in getting Buzz  knocked out of the window. Buzz follows Andy's car to the petrol station and Buzz and Woody have a  fight which results in both of them being left behind.

We discussed the clip and answered the following questions:

· Do you think Woody really means to push Buzz out of the window?

· Why is Woody so upset with Buzz?

· In this clip, what are the consequences of Woody refusing to accept Buzz?

· What would have happened if Woody had been nicer to Buzz?

· How else could Woody have dealt with the situation?

Most of the kids picked up on the fact both characters were wrong, and should have given grace to the other, being angry  usually results in us making bad decisions

4         Bible Study – He Does this…

The kids were split in to Pairs, each have a bible verse (below), and are tasked in finding the bible verse, and thinking up an action that shows it.

·         Ephesians 2:3 (Once we had made God angry and were to be punished.)

·         Ephesians 1:7 (Jesus sacrificed his blood for us)

·         Ephesians 2:4 (God made us alive with Christ)

·         Ephesians 1:5 (God chose us to be adopted sons)

·         Ephesians 1:3 (We are blessed with every spiritual blessing)

·         Ephesians 2:10 (God planned things for us to do for him)

When everybody was ready, each pair read their verse and showed their action/skit.

5         Hangman

Open up the bible, and chose one of the words in the page as the word.. kids have to guess. Usual hangman rules….  (small link, there was a picture of Hangman in the Toy Story video clip!)

Kids liked this!

6         Bible Study with Video : A loving Father

Showed the video :

 

 

 

Ask the children why they think the father was so forgiving.

We explained that the father is like God. He loves us more than we can imagine, far more than we deserve and He treats us with grace all the time.  The father could have forgiven his son and let him be a servant - that would have been enough. What else did the father do to his son?

That is like God. He doesn't just forgive us; He gives us a whole new start and provides us with all sorts of gifts as we start again with him - even though we don't deserve it. That's grace!

7         Final prayer and end

April 7^th: After Easter – what happened?

Game – follow the leader

All the kids in a  big circle, one child goes out and is the “guesser”, the other kids elect a “leader” who does regular actions, and when he/she change the action everybody follows. The “guesser” comes in and attempts to guess who is the leader. 3 attempts….

 

UPSET AND CONFUSED

 

Recap of Easter and what happened.

Today Looking at what happened after Easter in more detail.

Question “what did you think the disciples felt after Jesus had died? Devastated? Confused about his teaching? They had expected him to become a great leader but now he was dead.

 

Paper given out and children asked to write some of the words they have thought of. They should illustrate the words - for instance if they have thought of scared they could write it in shaky handwriting as if the word was trembling.

 

The words were cut out and pined up on a notice board.

 

 

 

Persuasion Game

 

Children sat down, and 1 chosen to try to convince the rest of the group of an amazing fact.

 

After each “discussion” the other kids are asked “are you convinced by the argument? Why? Why not? What would convince you it was true?”

 

Facts attempted:

· There is going to be free MacDonald's served in every school for dinner.

· There is life on the moon.

· Chocolate is good for your brain.

· The driving age is being lowered to 13.

· CITV is being axed.

· A monkey is going to be the new President of America.

· Ice cream makes really good shampoo and leaves your hair shiny.

· The age for leaving school is being raised to 25.

 

At the end we discussed the fact that when Jesus rose from the dead the women had to convince the other disciples that they had really seen Jesus, and he was alive. How hard do you think it would have been for the woman to convince the disciples?  What was the one thing that would have convinced them ?

 Video:Jesus Appears to His Disciples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SwLTL5Gu14

 

 Bible reading

“Imagine you are Jesus’s disciples and that this scene had just taken place”

Read John 20v19-22

In small groups kids were encouraged to write down what had happened, and how they would feel about that.

Read John 20v24-25

In small groups the kids were encouraged to write down what Thomas response was and why they think Thomas wouldn’t believe that JC was alive

Read John 20v26-29

Small groups -  jot down what happened in these verses and how did Thomas feel when Jesus appeared? Was he embarrassed by his earlier doubt? Or happy to see Jesus again?

 

WoW

“At the beginning we came up with some words for how disciples felt when Jesus died. We’ve heard how he came alive again and it was seen by lots of people”

“how do you think the disciples felt now that Jesus was Alive? (Small groups – brainstorm)

 Final Prayer and close.

 

(11 kids attended in total)

3 Feb 2013 – The Bible

11 Children (only 1 girl!) aged 8-11

What we did:

1)      Word Search

To give them something to concentrate on at the start

 

 

2)      Quiz – Proverbs

·         A number of “sayings” were displayed on the screen, the kids had to decide whether they are from the bible or made up.

·         Examples include:

(a)    Always  shut the door (False)

(b)   When you're kind to others, you help yourself; when you're cruel to others, you hurt yourself. (True. Proverbs 11:17)

(c)    Wise children listen to their parents. (True. Proverbs 13:1)

(d)   Those who control their tongues will have a long life.(True. Proverbs 13:3)

(e)   Always buy your youth leader chocolate. (False L)

(f)     Yanking a dog’s ear is as foolish as interfering in someone else’s argument. (True. Proverbs 26:17)

·         For some of them we discussed what they meant

·         Next time  - use less proverbs (I used 17), took a fair while.

·         This aimed to show that the bible is full of lots of practical advice

 

3)      Video – Observation test

·         State “2000+ years ago, they didn’t have TVs, so all the rules and knowledge were distributed audibly or written down. Even with TVs we can mis-remember things, “

·         Many kids thought this was like “Britain’s Brightest” (TV show that I’m afraid I haven’t watched.. note to self, they like to compare activities with TV programs)

·         Showed the video below, and asked questions.

 

·         Example questions were:

(a)    What was the cheese doing on the mouse trap (crying)

(b)   What did the 1st strawberry walk in front of (teapot and cup)

(c)    what year was this made (2009)

Most of the kids got most of the questions right (although one only guessed the  year after a lot of other wrong guesses J)

4)      Mirror

·         Gave an example of looking in a mirror, walking off and forgetting what I looked like, and doing it a few times.

·         Kids Read James 1v22-24 & were asked the relevance of the mirror task

·         Some kids cottoned on to the fact that reading the bible and not acting on it is as stupid as looking in a mirror and forgetting what you look like straight away

·         Kids read James 3v2-12 and discussed what good/bad things we can say to build people up / knock them down.

5)      Puppet Video

·        " So we have lots of info in the bible about how to live, "

·         Showed this video to explain that the Bible is a bit like an Instruction Manual, you need to read it for best results.

 

 

6)      What/When/How/Where

·         We discussed how we could read the bible more, and act on it. The kids each  had a small piece of paper with this image on it, and during some music spent time reflecting on what changes they could do to help them read the bible, (What would help them, When they would do it, How they could do it, Where they could do it).

·         We spoke about the use of Bible Reading notes, one child mentioned “Topz” which I know some children of this age use / used.

·         They seemed positive about having a look at bible reading notes, so this is something I’ll pick up with them next time (after seeking if I can “find” a friendly supplier )

 

7)      Final prayer & end

Lessons Learnt:

I had a couple more things to do that didn’t happen due to time, including Craft and Memory Verse.

Overall the kids were well behaved (compared to previous weeks), had to be told to be quiet a few times, but did so.