Have fun seeing if you can re-tell parts of the Easter story in similar locations to where the Biblical events took place. Now, I’m not suggesting going to Israel, although that would be a pretty cool field trip! No, I’m meaning the types of places in which different parts of the Easter story occur, such … Read more
Challenge: Read the whole Easter story by Easter. You have four gospels to choose from, so maybe pick the one you like or one you’re less familiar with. You could choose a different Bible version from that which you usually use. If you’re doing this with very young children, you might want to use a … Read more
This is a lot like sweets prayer but with mini eggs. The concept is simple: 1 For each colour egg, decide on one category of things to thank God for. 2 Take it in turns to take a mini egg and thank God for something in that category before eating your egg. Prayers can be … Read more
When having some fun in the snow, why not add in some prayer? The opportunity for this type of prayer is very seasonal and geographically limited but may be more special for it. Get everyone to write, draw or make a snow model of something they’d like to say sorry to God for doing, something they … Read more
This year, I’ve been wondering about The Star. I love decorating my house with story-themed decorations and this year is going to be stars, so I wanted to spend some time reading and exploring this part of the Christmas story in Matthew 2:1-15. So I started with this question: What do you notice in this story? … Read more
These cute little books are a fab way to explore Bible stories from the perspective of a character in the story. This could be one of the main characters or someone who observed, one of the crowd or the family of the ‘main protagonist’. Thinking about what they saw and heard, what they might have … Read more
Cut out paper angels and write or draw prayers on them and send the to the person you are praying for. Sometimes when praying for people, we wish we could be there, but actually, someone else is there who is much more useful! God, who is everywhere, is with them, and I believe also commands … Read more
This week I received this question and thought it might be helpful for you too: Hi Victoria, I am a children and families minister. I’ve been looking for ways to use my ‘Sunday school’ group to be more about actually encountering God and furnishing spirituality and wondered if you had ever applied ‘My God Book’ … Read more
When I put together the Held in Hope series, we included activities in the books to help families dealing with issues of illness and death. I’m putting together some activities for a funeral next week, so I’m doing an activity from Sam’s Special Book. In the book the children remember being told that Jesus said … Read more
Last week a tragedy happened in a town near us when two young boys were killed in a hit-and-run. One mother whose daughter knew the boys contacted me asking if I knew of any resources to help them, and as we’ve also had a family bereavement this week, I thought a post about things which … Read more
This activity provides an open-ended opportunity to respond to a story using words. I’d probably use it for children age 7+ after sharing a Bible story with them as I don’t want negotiating the words to become the focus for early readers. For them I’d use something similar but picture based like this. This set … Read more
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