Where does my help come from?

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. It's nearly the end of the summer holidays and this is our last look into the Psalms with Larry and Joy. We hope you've enjoyed meeting them over the past few weeks. 

Today we're looking at Psalm 121. We see Psalms written down in our Bibles but lots of them were originally written as songs. Lots of Psalms appear in the songs we sing when we are in church. Today's Psalm has been turned into a fantastic song with an animation that really brings the words to life. We hope you enjoy it.

Larry is getting ready to going back to school. It looks like he's got lots of the things he needs already. I wonder how he is feeling about it?

 

And here's that song. It's one of our favourites. It might be fun to sing it on the way to school to remind us that God is with us and loves us every day. We can sing it now too. Can you remember the actions?

We've got our verse on the colouring page today too. Maybe you would like to colour it in and put it up in your house to remind you that God is with you every day.

 You can download it here

Prayer

Today we're going to use something from our kitchen to help us pray. 

Find a teaspoon to hold in your hand.

In a recipe, a teaspoon is shortened to the letters TSP. We can use these letters to help us pray.

T

We can say Thank You that God is amazing and that he gives us wonderful things

S

We can say Sorry for things we have done wrong

P

We can say Please for things we would like God to help us with.

Spend a few quiet moments thinking of your own teaspoon prayer.

Thanks for popping by today. Next week we are going to be bringing F@CT online and we have one of our F@CT friends calling in for a chat. We hope you can join us.

Make a Joyful noise

Hi everyone. Welcome to Christchurch Kids. How are you feeling today? Happy, sad, nervous, excited?

Larry is looking happy but Joy is looking a bit sad. Let's find out why.

Poor Joy. She was feeling sad that she missed her holiday. Sometimes things make us feel sad and that's OK. The good news is that God will never let us down. He doesn't change and He always loves us. He is always good and always trustworthy. He cares if we are feeling happy or sad. This means we can always sing songs to God about how amazing He is because He always is. 

Psalm 100 isn't long. It's only 5 verses. The longest Psalm is 119 that has 176 verses!

              Psalm 100 - A Song of Thanks

 

Sing to the Lord, all the world!

Worship the Lord with Joy

Come before him with happy songs

Know that the Lord is God.

He made us, and we belong to Him.

We are his people, the sheep he tends.

Come into his city with songs of thanksgiving

Come into his courtyards with songs of praise.

Thank him and praise his name.

The Lord is good. His love continues forever.

His loyalty continues from now on.

We've got some birds to help us sing today on our colouring page.

 You can download it here

We love singing songs to God when we are at church but the great thing is that we can sing to God anywhere. We've got two songs today to help us "Sing to the Lord". Maybe we could make our own version of the psalm to include doing actions too. 

We hope you've had a great time singing to God today. We'll be back next Sunday to find out what else Larry and Joy will find out about the Psalms. 

Taste and See

Hello. Thanks for popping in to our Christchurch Kids blog. Have you had any yummy treats this summer? Maybe you've had an ice cream cone or a cold drink on a hot day? Today we are talking about tasting things.

This looks like a delicious cake. I wonder what Larry and Joy think about it?

       

Thanks Larry and Joy. We hope you enjoy trying all  those new courgette recipes!

Can you imagine meeting someone who has never heard of cake before? You could say the word to them but they wouldn't know what it meant. You could show them a picture of some cake, just like the one above, and they might think it looked nice. Would they really know what cake was like? They wouldn't know about cake until they had eaten some, until they had tried it for themselves.

Today we are looking at a Bible verse from Psalm 34. When the Psalm says "Taste and see that the Lord is good", what does it mean? We can read all about how God is good in the Bible and we can listen to other people talking about how amazing God is too. That's all really important but God wants us to experience that He is good in our own lives today. 

We can feel and experience that God is good to us by paying attention to all the special things that God is doing for us and with us every day. He wants to be a part of our lives because He loves us.

Another great way of experiencing God in our own lives is to pray to Him. We can talk to God and we can listen to Him too. 

The words from this Psalm have been made into a song. We can sing about how we can say thank you to God because He is always good. You could have a go at the dance routine.

We've got a colouring page with our verse today. What flavour are you going to make your ice-cream?

Pink for strawberry, yellow for lemon or maybe green for courgette?!

You can download it here.

                                       

Prayer

We can use our senses to pray just like we use our senses when we eat.

Take a moment to be still.

Think of 5 things around you that you can see.

Think of 4 things around you that you can touch.

Think of 3 things you can hear.

Think of 2 things you can smell.

Think of 1 thing you can taste.

Think about all those things you have noticed. We can thank God that He is good and gives us good things.

We hope you have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday for more adventures in the book of Psalms.

You are unique

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. We hope you've had a great week and have been able to enjoy the sunshine. We have all been finding different ways to spend our time this summer. Some people like to play on the beach and some prefer walks in the countryside. Maybe you like to kick a ball around outside or stay inside and do some crafts. We are all made to be unique with different likes and talents.  

Today we are looking at Psalm 139, with a bit of help from some Lego.

Take a timer and set it to 30 seconds. Write down everything that comes to your mind in that time. 

How many thoughts popped into your head? Guess what, God already knew all of them… We are going to look into Psalm 139. You can listen and watch the Psalm below.

What's that noise? I think Larry might need a bit of help! It's OK, Joy's coming to help him.

Great jokes Larry! 

We've got two colouring pages today from Psalm 139 as there are so many great verses. 

The first has got space to add a picture of you!

 You can download it here

 

  The second page tells us that wherever we are, God will be there to help us.

You can download it here

 

Prayer

God knows you really well. He knows you better than your parents, better than your closest friends and better than you know yourself. He is interested in you and your life; not just your name, age and hobbies, but how you are, what you think and how you feel. He is the creator of the universe, he keeps the world in motion, but he also wants to know your everything and pursues you. Isn’t that fantastic? That our wonderful God not only holds the whole world but also is interested in you and me. 

No matter where you are or go, God is there. He will always search for you and find you. He is in everything and everywhere. He wants to be close to you and spend time with you. He knows every detail of your life from what you ate this morning for breakfast to the big things in your life. He knows our ups and downs and the in between, he knows our weaknesses and our strengths, he knows our everything and wants to be close to you, because he loves you.

Now look at your initial thoughts you wrote down. You can use them to start praying and thanking God for his presence in your life and that he knows you through and through.

We've got a fun song today all about how we can praise God with all our whole bodies, wherever we are and however we are feeling. We hope you have fun joining in with the actions.

We hope you have a great week and we will see you again next Sunday.

I can talk to God about anything

 Hi everyone. It's Sunday on Christchurch Kids and today we are looking at a verse from Psalm 145. It's got some long words in it but Joy is going to help us out with those as Larry's finding them a bit difficult to understand.

This is our verse for today.

There are so many amazing verses in the Bible that it can be tricky to remember them. Singing them in a song is a great way to help us remember. We've got a song we can listen to that will help us with our verse today. 

We can sing along with it too.

Joy really liked that song. She's been humming it for ages. It looks like Larry has got his dictionary out. Let's find out why...

Prayer

Just like Joy said, we can talk to God about anything as he is loving and kind and understands how we feel. 

We can take some time to be quiet and talk to God about how we are feeling today. 

Have a go at drawing some cartoon faces with different expressions to remind you that we can talk to God however we are feeling.

Drawing Facial Expressions

Another way to remember a Bible verse is to have a picture of it on a wall so we see it every day. 

Here is today's verse. You could colour it in and put it up in your house. 

You can download it here

Let's join in with one of our favourite songs today. We hope you have fun singing along, having a dance and doing the actions.

We hope you have a fun week. Virtual Venture is starting tomorrow! Ventures are a holiday for children where they can make new friends, have lots of fun and learn about God. Emy usually helps out at Blandford 3 Venture for 8-11 year olds. This year we aren't able to go away for the week together but the good news is that the Venture has moved online. That means you can see what a Venture is like from your own home and for FREE! You will spot Emy online getting involved with all the fun. The Virtual Venture is in the form of a blog, just like here. That means that even if you are a bit busy next week, you can dip into the activities for the rest of August.

 If you want to join in, you can click here to sign up.