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.