Pentecost

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. Today is a special day for the church. It is called Pentecost and it's when we celebrate and remember the day that the Holy Spirit first came to the disciples. Here's the story of that amazing day.

Can you imagine what it would have been like in Jerusalem on that day? There were lots of people from lots of different places. All of a sudden, the disciples came out into the crowd and everyone could hear God's message spoken in their own language. 

What does is sound like to hear "God Loves You" in different languages? Have a listen here...

We have a fun song about everything that happened on the day of Pentecost.

It sounds like a huge party  happened at Pentecost with 3000 people joining the disciples after they had heard God's message for them. We can make our own party hats to join in the celebration and these hats look like the flames that rested on the disciples' heads.

Pictures from mykidcraft.com

Start by colouring in a paper plate. If you choose orange, red and yellow colours, your hat will look more like flames.

Carefully make a hole in the centre of the plate ( you may want to ask an adult to help you with this bit). Cut straight lines from the hole in the centre to the edge of the flat bit of the plate , leaving the rim intact. Pull the triangles up to make your party crown.

The Holy Spirit is described as a gift from God. It is the best gift as it says in the Bible that as we stay close to God, the Holy Spirit works in us to help us to grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are called the Fruits of the Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples went out and shared God's love with many other people. As we grow with God, the Fruits of the Spirit shine out and help us to share God's love too.

Our colouring page today features the Fruits of the Spirit and you can download it here

Prayer

Make a paper prayeroplane! The Holy Spirit is described as being like a strong wind and a dove. We can make flying prayers today by writing a prayer and folding it up into a paper aeroplane. How far does it travel? Our prayers travel all the way to heaven!

 If you want some help making a paper aeroplane, there are instructions here

We've got a fantastic song from Spring Harvest about the Holy Spirit to listen to and it's a great one to dance too as well. 

To finish our celebration for Pentecost we have a message for you all from everyone on the children's team at Christchurch. We have been playing a long distance game of catch!

We hope you have all had a fun half term and have enjoyed our Pentecost celebrations today. We would love to see any pictures of crafts, colouring and prayers. Did you spot Supergranny playing our game of catch? Come back next week to hear more from her.

Standing on the rock

Welcome to Wiggle Wednesday. On Sunday, we heard the parable of the Two Builders and about how as we learn more about God and spent time talking and listening to Him, it is like building a house on a rock with strong foundations.

We have a great song today to sing and dance to which is all about standing with our feet on the rock. It says that when things get stormy, we can stand firm with God. 

The Two Builders

Hello everyone and welcome to Sunday on Christchurch Kids. 

Today we are looking at the Parable of the Two Builders. One was good at building a house but the other one didn't follow the instructions. 

Parables are stories that Jesus told to tell us more about God and how we can follow him. What did the story of the Two Builders tell us? 

The buildings in the story are like our faith in God. 

If we take our time to listen and learn about God's word in the Bible and talk and listen to Him in prayer, then we are building up strong foundations just like the builder building a strong house. When things get tough then we have a firm base to help us and we will find it easier to rely on God. 

Our colouring page today looks at a Bible verse from Ephesians that talks about our lives being built on God's love.

I pray that your life will be strong in love and built on love. And I pray that you will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ's love. I pray that you can understand how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.

Ephesians 3: 17-18

You can download the colouring page here

We have a Chat Mat too this week. These are great for colouring and chatting about!

You can download it here

You can have a go at building something yourself this week. How about making your own paper building blocks? The instructions can be found here I wonder how tall a tower you could build with them? Starting with a wide base for a foundation would help the tower grow taller. 

You could have a go at retelling the story with Lego just like our video. There are great free apps around to help make short stop animation films, such as StopMotion Studio.

Prayer

Lego prayers from Flame:Creative

Today we are going to use Lego to help us pray. 

Find a Lego or Duplo brick.

Hold the brick in your hand and take a moment to be still and quiet. Pray for yourself. What would you like God to help you with this week.

Count the bumps on the brick. Pray for someone else for each of those bumps. Pray that God would help them this week.

Find a brick that is a different colour. Thank God that we are all made differently and we all have special things we are good at. 

Find a brick that is the same shape. Thank God for our families and friends and those who look after us. Ask God to help us be friends to people who might be feeling lonely.

Use a few bricks to build a small tower. Thank God for our church and our community. Ask God to show us how we can include people in our community and help them feel loved. 

Our Bible verse today talked about how wide, high, long and deep God's love is. Here's one of our favourite Sunday morning songs with high, wide and deep actions...

We hope you've had lots of fun building today. We would love to see some of your building projects or animations. You can send pictures in using the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you have a fun half term and we will be back on Wiggle Wednesday.

Half term fun

Following the success of Spring Harvest Home over Easter, the Spring Harvest team are back for half term. 

You can look forward to an episode of Virtual Sunday School on Monday at 9:30am, two brand new editions of Big Start Extra on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:30am, a ‘Thought for the Day’ from Bob Hartman Tuesday to Friday at 10:15am, Bible Buds for toddlers on Thursday at 9am, Doug Horley on Friday at 11am and much more.

You can find all the Spring Harvest Home videos on their YouTube channel here

All around the world

Hello! It's Wiggle Wednesday today and we've got two songs to listen to today. The first one is a quieter song and the second will have us dancing around the house. 

Our first song has been made by children all over the world, including the UK, France, Germany, USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Thailand, China, and Kuwait. We can't meet up in our church building on Sundays at the moment but the church family is still loving God and following him together online all over the world. Isn't it exciting to know that we are part of that huge family. 

Isn't that an amazing song!

Are you ready for a dance now? This is a song we usually play before F@CT on a Sunday. It is so much fun. 

Join us again on Sunday for more adventures with Lego. 

Creative Colouring

We hope you have all been enjoying our colouring pages. We've been sent a picture of this fantastic colouring from our friend E from Christchurch. Hasn't she done an amazing job! We love the stars she added in the background.

You can now find all our colouring pages easily using the tab at the top of the page. 

We'd love to see pictures of any of your colouring, crafts or prayers you have been working on. You can send them to Emy at sundaychildrenandfamiliescoordinator@christchurch-clevedon.org.uk

Guardians of Ancora

There are lots of new games online at the moment as well as things to learn. Scripture Union has brought those two things together with an exciting new game to play that helps us learn more about the Bible. It's called "Guardians of Ancora."

When we are online, it is very important to stay safe and so if you would like to learn more about playing Guardians of Ancora, please ask an adult to help you get started.

There is more about the game on the Scripture Union website here.

Guardians of Ancora have their own website too here.

Here is a video from YouTube which gives you an idea about what the game is like. 

How can we pray?

Welcome to Christchurch Kids. We hope you've had a great week. We are joining in with our whole church today again as we look at prayer.

When Jesus was on Earth, his disciples asked him how we should pray. The answer he gave them is what we now call The Lord's Prayer. We usually say it together on a Sunday and it looks like this.

We are going to try to understand the Lord's Prayer a bit more. We don't think that  Jesus meant we could only use these exact words. He was telling us the type of things we should pray about. 

Here is another version of the Lord's Prayer told in a way that might make it a bit easier to understand.

There are lots of different ways to pray. Some people like to talk out loud, some like to think quietly and some like to sing. Here is a version of the Lord's Prayer which is a song.

We're going to go on a scavenger hunt now. Can you find something...

...with a smiley face on it?

...with a heart?

... soft like a feather?

...sparkly and precious?

... something royal?

...to build with?

...to eat?

... clean and dirty?

... hard like a rock?

... to keep you safe?

... really awesome?!

Prayer

We're going to use the things we found on our scavenger hunt to help us to pray the Lords Prayer.

Our Father in heaven

Find the smiley face object, the heart and the item as soft as a feather.

These represent gentleness, happiness and love to help us think about what heaven is like.

Hallowed be Your Name

Find the sparkly, precious item.

Hallowed means honoured or special. This represents that we honour God and think he is amazing.

Your kingdom come

Find your royal item.

God's kingdom is where God is King - in the world and in our hearts. We are saying that we want God to be King.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Find your heart item again.

This means that we want what God wants to happen.

Give us today our daily bread.

Find something to eat and something to build with.

We are asking God to give us the things that we need.

And forgive us our sins 

As we forgive those who sin against us

Find something clean and something dirty.

These items represent that God has forgiven us for the things we have done wrong. We were once dirty but now we are clean. We ask God to help us to forgive people who might have done something wrong to us.

Lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

Find something hard like a rock and something to keep us safe.

The item that is hard like a rock represents difficult times when things feel hard. The item that keeps us safe shows us the God will be with us and keep us safe.

For yours is the kingdom the power 

and the glory now and forever.

Find your really awesome item.

This part means that we think God is amazing and awesome and will be forever.

Amen

In the book of Romans in the Bible, it tells us to pray at all times. This is the verse on our colouring page today and you can download it here

We have a song about praying at all times...

We hope you have a good week and we would love to see some of the objects you found on your scavenger hunt. You can send us photos using the instructions in the right hand column.

We'll be back for Wiggle Wednesday!

All through History

Hello! It's Wiggle Wednesday today and we have a song about some of our favourite characters from the Bible. How many people from the Bible do you think you can recognise in the picture above?

Our song today talks about some of those amazing Bible stories and reminds us that God was faithful and helped those people and helps and loves us just the same. We hope you enjoy this song and maybe have a little dance.

Why Pray?

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. This Sunday we are joining in with the whole of our church and asking a BIG QUESTION...

Why pray?

Here's a short clip to start to explain why we pray.

We're getting an idea about prayer now. It's about being in a relationship with God. 

We can't talk to God like we talk to our friends (can we?) so here is another short clip with some ideas about how we can pray.

We have an idea about why we pray and how we can pray but what do we pray about?

This video talks a bit more about prayer and gives us some great examples of when people have prayed in the Bible. 

Using the letters P R A Y can help us remember the things we might pray about. Our colouring sheet this week looks at those letters from the video and you can download it here.

A game

 We can talk to God about anything! Have you ever played the alphabet game where you have to think of something that starts with every letter of the alphabet, such as animals. See if you can think of something beginning with every letter of the alphabet that we can talk to God about.

Prayer

We are going to have a go at making our own prayer station. A prayer station is an activity or a collection of objects that help us to think about our prayers. 

We can make a Lego prayer station. This a great idea from the Flame:Creative blog. If you don't have little Lego, you could use Duplo or Playmobil or you could draw a prayer station.

Start by making a cross shape on the base to help us remember we are bringing our prayers to Jesus.

Now you can use your Lego to pray. You could use different colour bricks to represent different things you would like to pray for. You could build bricks together to represent a family or a group.  You can use figures and accessories too, such as trees and flowers for prayers for the environment.

When you have assembled your prayer station, take some time to be still and talk to God about the things you have on the board.

We've got a song about prayer. When we pray we are trusting God instead of trying to do things on our own. Can you make up your actions for this song?

Thanks for joining us. We would love to see pictures of your prayer stations. If you would like to send them to us to put on the blog, please follow the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you all have a great week and we will be back on Wiggle Wednesday for a song and a dance.

Faith as tiny as a seed

Hi and welcome to Wiggle Wednesday. On Sunday, we were looking at the parable of the Sower and growing seeds. Our song today talks about seeds too. The Bible says that if our faith is as tiny as a seed, God can do amazing things.

We hope you enjoy singing along and having a dance.

We'll be back on Sunday.

The seeds and the sower

Hi everyone and welcome to Sunday on Christchurch Kids. I love stories! I enjoy reading stories and listening to stories. What is your favourite story?

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at some stories Jesus told. Jesus knew that people love listening to stories so he told his followers parables. These are stories that have a meaning. They tell us more about who God is and how we can be closer to him.

 The first parable we are looking at is called "The Parable of the Sower"

We have a song about The Sower too. Look out for those tweeting birds...

With all this talk of growing seeds, you might like to have a go at growing some seeds yourself.

You probably have seeds in your house without even realising it. Here are some growing projects you could try using pips from your fruit.

You can grow a plant from :

an avocado pip

a mango pip

a citrus pip (oranges, lemons or limes)

an apple pip

You could grow carrot tops too!

If you need some pots for your growing seeds, you could make your own from toilet paper tubes

Make a "packet of seeds"

In the parable of the Sower, the seeds that fell on good soil were like the people who listened to God's word and held it close to their hearts. One way we can listen to what God has to say is by reading the Bible. We can make our "packet of seeds" by decorating an envelope or notebook and keeping our favourite Bible verses in there. 

Maybe they are the colouring pages from this blog. Maybe they are Bible verses that you already know or have heard in church or at home. You could write them down, decorate them or draw them as a picture. Keep them in your "seed packet" and take them out and have a look through them every now and again. 

Prayer

Today we are drawing a prayer tree. Start by drawing a tree trunk on a piece of paper and then add branches. you could add a branch for "family" and write down the names of your family as leaves around the branch. You could add other branches: a thank you branch; a sorry branch; a please branch; a friends branch; a world branch...  Add words around the branches as leaves to your tree. If you don't want to write words on your tree, you could add pictures or ask someone to help you write them down.

When your tree is finished, spend a quiet moment looking back over the tree and talk to God about the things you have written down.

The Bible says that God's word is like a light showing us the right way. Our colouring page today shows that verse and imagines that the light is a lighthouse.You can download it here.

As we have been talking about lighthouses, it would be great to sing along with one of our absolute favourite songs from Sunday mornings.

We hope you all have a great week. We would love to see any crafts or prayers you have been doing. You can send it to us following the instructions in the right hand column.