I love Advent Candles and you can get these from amazon. We light ours each dinner time in Advent, sometimes spending a few minutes chatting or praying or being thankful (here are 25 ideas on things to be thankful for!). Here are some other ideas of prayers you could use each time you light your … Read more
I wanted to look at the Jewish ‘High Holy Days’ as they are known, to find some rituals we could use to enrich our faith at home. I’m not going to give an exhaustive overview here, (because you have google too!) but my focus is what elements we could adapt and use. In Autumn there … Read more
“People who learn to ‘sit still and be quiet’ in church during the early years of their life are more likely to continue to ‘sit still and be quiet in church as adults.” Sharon had me with this quote… let me give a few headlines and then you can read what else I discovered: Title: … Read more
Have fun moving about and playing this game as you pray. If you’re not familiar with the traditional game of Twister, it’s quite simple: you spin the spinner until it lands on a colour and one body part (left or right hand or foot). You then place that part of your body on a spot … Read more
A little post in response to Kate Mitchell’s question on Facebook Offering spiritual play opportunities is something a little different from our usual tell a Bible story and do Thanks / Sorry / Please prayers. It involves more trust – trust in the methodology, in our children and, of course, in God! An easy way … Read more
I’ve often heard that prayer is something lots of people do, whether they go to church or not. Recent research by Scripture Union showed this is particularly true for children. However, many Christians feel inadequate in their own prayer life which makes passing this on to others quite daunting. I think prayer is both the … Read more
I love Advent and candles. Here’s a really simple idea for using them to develop thankfulness in the run up to Christmas. It doesn’t take long, but a few moments each day will help develop a habit of thankfulness in a month when so much is trying to pull us away from it. You might … Read more
A simple way to bring a moment of quiet in a busy Advent season is to use a candle. Just lighting it and watching the flame seems to allow time to slow a little. You can use an Advent Candle (see here for ways of making one) or simply a plain one. Here’s some ideas … Read more
This is really similar to the Thanks jar but without the risk of broken glass, either in the session or at home. It works at any time of year, but I like to do it at the start of the year. We did it at our Messy Church, using one box for thank you words … Read more
This is a guest post by Mina Munns of the super Flame: Creative Children’s Ministry blog. If you’ve not seen it, take a look! It’s full of fabulous ideas for prayer and stories and faith suitable for families, children, including under 5s and adults. If you’ve never heard of Play dough mats then you have … Read more
Praying for people we know is a precious gift. It’s something accessible to us from a very early age, as this picture prayer book shows. I’ve often had a collage on my wall of photos of people I want to remember to pray for, or a photo album of the same. Here’s an idea to keep it accessible even to babies: make … Read more
This weekend I was in Hudderfield at an event for under 5s, where I was invited to share about Player Together and Praying Together. As part of my workshops I took 10 activities to play and pray with under fives and made a little leaflet of them. Here’s the 10 activities I included: 1 fuzzy … Read more