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

8th July 2013 - Friends

Best Friends  8th July 2013

1. Game – Here I Sit

(see description of this here)

2. Activity-Best Friends

Ask the children to get into pairs. Each pair should think of a surprising friendship, either from the Bible or from television or movies - like Shrek and donkey or Danny and Sandy - people that you wouldn't expect to be friends.

Each pair should pretend to be the friends that they have chosen and introduce themselves to the rest of the group, eg “Hi, we are (Shrek and Donkey). We have been friends for (a while) now. People are surprised that we are friends because (he's a donkey and I'm an ogre. Also he never stops talking and I am a grumpy watsit who likes peace and quiet.) “

The ones chosen in this session were

• Princess and Frog
• Him and Himself (?)
• Oberon, Puck and Titania (never know an 11 year old boy knew that much about Shakespeare”)

Other suggestions:

• Adam and Eve
• Bill and Ben
• Jack and Jill
• Kermit and Miss Piggy
• Lady and the Tramp….

When each pair has been introduced write their (fictional) names on a flip chart.

Ask the children to think about which of the pairs were the most surprising friends. Each child should take a slip of paper and vote for one of the pairs.

Count the votes and see who has been voted as the most unlikely friendship.

Finished off the activity by talking briefly about what might make very different people want to be friends with each other. What makes a good friendship?

3. Activity /Drama FRIENDS IN NEED

We talked together about the difficulties we go through at different times and the things that might make us feel very sad or very happy. The reactions of our friends can either help us or make things worse for us.

Kids then took turns at:

• Pretending to need help (eg being bullied, feeling ill, and failed an exam…)
• Somebody else – saying negative things to them
• Somebody else- saying good things

The kids loved this, but we used it as an example of how we could build people up or not...

 Song – Dave Godfreys Holy Washing Machine

With actions (of course)

 

 

 Bible Study

Kids split in to groups, and went thru the following verses and tried to answer questions…

John 15:12-14

• What commandment has Jesus given his disciples?
• What is the greatest thing you can do for a friend?
• Can you think of any commandments God has given about how we are supposed to treat other people?
• What can you learn about friendship from this passage?

Acts 24:23 and 27:3

• What did Paul's friends do for him?

• What sort of things do you think his friends helped Paul with?

• Should friends give things to each other without expecting things back in return?

Proverbs 17:17, 27:6

• When is a friend loyal?

• Can you think of times when it would be difficult to be loyal to a friend?

• What do you thinkthat "wounds from a friend" are?

• Why might a good friend sometimes do something that upsets you - can you think of an example?

• There is a saying "cruel to be kind" - what does this mean? Do you think that this passage is about being "cruel to be kind"?

• Why is it better to be told the truth by a friend than to be flattered by someone who doesn't care?

• What can you learn about friendship from this passage?

The Point: To look at different Bible passages about friendship. John gives us Jesus' commandment to  love one another; Acts shows us briefly that Paul's' friends responded to his needs - which raises questions about how much friends should be prepared to give one another - and Proverbs looks at the  times when friends have to be cruel to be kind!

 

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2nd June 2013 - Parables

all boys aged 8-10 (yes, it was rather loud! :) )

Parables

Introduction

When Jesus taught he typically taught by using parables. Parables are attention grabbing –

Jesus took everyday occurrences and made them into object lessons. Often Jesus' parables are about the land or the sea - fishing, farming. The people listening to Jesus could have followed his gaze and watched, for instance, a distant farmer sowing his seed as Jesus told the parable of the sower. They would have seen fishermen at work as Jesus told them the parable of the dragnet. This immediacy would have caught his audiences' attention and made his teaching relevant to their lives.

Q Why did Jesus use parables? / while keeping the interest of the audience, were not completely easy to understand - only those whom the holy Spirit wanted to understand would understand. Jesus used parables to keep his meaning slightly hidden from those who were not ready to understand him!

Game – Time

 

Stand the children at one side of the hall and ask them to cross in their own time to the other side.

Say that they should aim to take two minutes to get there - and time them!

See who manages to do the journey in the closest time to 1 minute.. repeat with different times. They enjoyed this game!

Object Lesson – use of objects in parables

 Described how parables are like object lessons, let the kids guess an object lesson for each of the items I had, then I told them my version…

Telephone

2 parts to hand piece, we need to listen and talk. Eg phone convo with somebody. Like when we talk to God, when we pray we upload our problems… but it’s good to be quiet and listen too

Coins

different size piles of different values, but all worth the same. God sees us all the same, doesn’t matter if you are tall or fat or different…

Toothpaste

“many ways to squeeze” from the top from the end. Kid sq        ueezes out toothpaste, then another tries to get it back in the tube. This is a bit like our words, easy to come out, but hard to take back. Brief talk about power of the tongue etc…

2 fizzy Cans

 open a can, yum, how do we get the drink out, we need to tip it up… what would happen if we just left the can on a table?  It would taste really blahh.   New Can – have you ever shaken a can first and then opened it.. what happens? Demonstrate..  God wants us to be like that in our praise, he wants us to be bubbling and overflowing, too often we wait for others to be excited… could I have kept the shaken drink in the can If I put my thumb over the hole/? No. and what happens if I just stay on the table, I go all yucky.

Sweet Banana

Eating a banana – tasty, have banana inside, a bit like what we  watch or do… we take it in and it sits in us.

On this occasion the boy who ate the banana has bright yellow crocks on. An obvious link to eating a yellow banana J

  

Summed up the object lessons for them to remember next time they eat a banana, use toothpaste etc

TEACHING STYLES

 

Kids in to small groups, with pen and paper  slips.

Kids write down different teaching methods, and order them in terms of most interesting…

Eg   talking, asking them to copy down writing, reading to themselves, doing experiments, generally chatting and so on.

Re order in terms of the easiest to learn from is at the top

Discussed..

PROCLAIM A MESSAGE

Kids in groups of 2, each pair has a message to proclaim for 1 minute. This was very loud. At end see who heard what.. example of proclaiming a message, discuss what worked. In practice the most successful was the boy who constantly repeated the phrase. Others wrote

·         Watch the news tonight because there is an important event going to take place.

·         The church is bugged and everything we say is heard by all your Parents

·         The world will blow up tomorrow, but we are ok, because Ipswich will be saved!

·         Tomorrow is national PlayStation day, and all children have to play on a PlayStation or other games console all day

 

FISHING!

Large blue sheet out to represent water, with paper fish underneath. Kids asked to race under the sheet and collect a fish and put in the “bad fish” pile or “good fish” pile

Read the Bible passage from Matthew 13:47-50. The children have just acted the parable out!

Kids asked about the parable, and why it wasn’t more direct.

Final games

Ladders

Prophesy - Deborah

May 5th 2013

Girl Power

Today is about a prophet, Deborah, we started by discussing if anybody knew about Deborah (and one of the kids said “is she the one that stabbed a tent peg in someone”, which of course is right, but not the focus of today!

Spoke about women in the bible.. led on to “Girl Power”, which led on to the Spice Girls (!)

For a bit of fun we all made simple masks of a spice girl, and (attempted to) danced to a Spice Girl Video (have to say, all but one of the children were boys, so this was a bit of fun!)

 

& some of the masks:

 

 

Origami

Spoke about Deborah being a prophet and making decisions so built a quick origami “choose”, some of the pictures used to guide the kids are below.

 

 

 

 

Word Association Brainstorm/Leadership

What is a judge, prophet, leader – that describes Deborah.

Played a quick game of “word association”, in groups of around 3, the kids wrote words that were associated with an initial word in 15+ seconds… words given are:

• TV,
• elephant,
• car,
• judge,
• prophet,
• leader

and we had some discussion about these...

Video – decisions

Showed a fun video about how to chose breakfast, discussed how we should make decisions and how Deborah did in her role.

Prediction Games

“it’s hard to make predictions”, so we played a few games, with the kids guessing who would win:

-          Running race (where only one person ran)

-          Running race (for all)

-          Throwing a die

 

Showed a card trick that amazed some of the kids, can’t write what I did here, will need to use it again! In short.. three piles of 3 cards, kids chose a pile, the  bottom card is shown to them, cards are shuffled, based on random things (eg kids name), and hey presto… the chosen card appears.

 

This led on to  a discussion about prophesy and messages people receive from God, how do they get them, do they happen now, some examples of messages received were given….

.. then we ran out of time, so final prayer and close..

 

However, a great Lego star wars version of the Deborah story (Judges 4) was planned to play, but timed out.. and is here….

(the day before was May the 4^th, Star Wars day, so this is so appropriate)

 

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)

March 3rd 2013 - Fruits of the Spirit

10 children, aged 8 -11

New venue (for me)

had 2 rooms, small one for “quiet” bits (and the video – much better light in that room) and large room for “noisy” games.

WordSearch

based on Fruits (Kiwi, Orange, Apple... etc)

Game – (big room time)

 splat

Introduction

This plan is based on...Fruits of the Spirit

Had a picture of an apple tree, how do we know it is a good apple tree. / because it gives fruit.

 

 

 A bit like us as Christians…

Bible Bit

 

Spoke about the theme, the Holy Spirit, specifically the “fruits of the Holy Spirit”

We all read Galatians 5v22-23, and each child took a “fruit” (eg Joy, faithfulness) and wrote it on a sheet of A4; with some decoration(if they were bothered), we stuck all these up on the wall & read the verses again.

Each was clarified if the meaning was unsure

Fruit Charades

Kids played Charades acting out one of the “fruits”,

What is the Holy Spirit

Looked at things in 3 parts, eg.

¨       Mars bar, Chocolate + Caramel + Nugart, can’t have a mars bar without one of them. Brought in a mars bar and chopped it up (very taasty)

¨       Egg = Shell + Yolk + White, broke it up to show them ( they were not surprised what was in the shell!)

 

Went on explain that God has three parts, the Farther, Jesus and HSpirit. We discussed each one eg God the Father created the world, Jesus dies for us, HS is our helper when we need it.

You’re Everywhere Song (for the 2nd time that day!)

 

Thought of where else we could say “You are .. in the traffic” could be “you are… with me at school”

Described how God thru the holy Spirit can be with us for guidance and protection at all times

What fruit do we need more of

Each kid took a few “fruit” shaped notes, and wrote down what they think they needed more of in terms of the “fruits of the spirit”. Some kids wrote down nearly ALL of them, others just 1 or 2. ALL children wrote something.

 

We prayed for the kids and their wishes.

Game

round the room piggy in the middle

the end

Final prayer and end.

 

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.