July F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! Thank you for joining us for dancing, crafts, fun and learning more about God.

Let's start with a song as we love to get up and moving at F@CT as we praise God. This song helps us celebrate that God is our amazing creator. We can sing, clap, dance and do actions to join in...

This year at F@CT, we are looking at the God's promises to us. God always keeps his promises so what are those promises? Today's promise is...

God Forgives Us

We've got a story about a time that Jesus showed forgiveness. When Jesus met Matthew, he was a tax collector and in those days, that meant that he would have been very unpopular as he was working for the Romans and he might well have been stealing some of the money for himself. Let's see what Jesus thought when he met Matthew.

Just like Matthew, we get stuff wrong too. The Bible calls this sin and that word means anything which isn't perfect, just like God is perfect. In this story, Jesus called Matthew and he stopped what he was doing and chose to follow Jesus. Jesus didn't walk away because Matthew was making wrong choices, he asked him to stop and follow him and Matthew did. 

When we pray and say sorry to God and choose to follow Him, God forgives us. 

It says in the Bible

There is no God like you. You forgive people who are guilty of sin.

You, Lord, will not stay angry forever. You enjoy being kind.   

Micah 7 : 18

Craft

When we pray we can use a teaspoon to help us. Does that sound a bit strange? When we are cooking and following a recipe, we might see the word teaspoon shortened to TSP. We can use this to help remember the sort of things we can pray about.

T = Thank you

S= Sorry

P= Please

When I pray, we might find it easy to say "thank you" and "please" but it's important to remember the "sorry" bit too. We are going to make a teaspoon to help us remember to add the sorry into our prayers.

If you don't have a wooden spoon, you could draw around a spoon onto some paper and card.

It's bit boring to have a spoon stuck up on your wall, or next to your bed to remind you about prayer so why don't you create your own spoon character.

Can you remember Forky from Toy Story 4? You could create someone a bit like him to help with your prayers.

You could use any crafty bits and bobs to add to your character or use pens and pencils to design your own spoon character.

Prayer

We've got a prayer we can say together to say sorry to God and we can remember God's promise that He forgives us. 

Saying Sorry prayer

Make a fist  

We are sorry for the times we have got angry with other people.

Point away from yourself with your index finger 

We are sorry for the times we have blamed others and seen things wrong in others without recognising we get things wrong too.

Close up your hand and hold it close to your chest 

We are sorry for the times we have kept things selfishly to ourselves .

 Put your hand over your mouth 

We are sorry for the words we have spoken which have hurt other people.

After a pause, hold out that same hand with an open palm upward, as if you are waiting to receive something. 

  Jesus says, 'If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest'. So we bring all that we are to Jesus - all our sins and our failure to love. Thank-you that you died for us so that we might be forgiven and start a new life in the power of your Holy Spirit.

As a way of remembering that it is through the cross that our sins are forgiven,  trace the shape of a cross with the index finger of your other hand across the palm of the hand you are holding out.

Amen

We've got another great song to join in with now. God's love is so BIG, GREAT, and STRONG and it goes on and on. We love to sing and dance about it.

Thanks for joining us for F@CT Online. We hope you've had fun finding out about God's promises today.

For the next two Sundays (11th - 18th July) we will be asking more questions about prayer here on our Christchurch Kids blog and in our Christchurch Kids sessions in church. If you would like to come to the group at church, you don't need to book anymore which makes it even easier to pop along and join in.

After the 18th July, it is the summer holidays - Hurray! We won't be posting on here and our Christchurch Kids group will be taking a summer break too but F@CT will be happening in church on August 1st. 

We hope to see you soon.

June F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! We're so glad you could join us here. We hope you've had a brilliant half term week.

We're going to start F@CT Online with a fantastic song. At F@CT, we love to sing to God and dance and join in with the actions. This is the perfect song to get us moving. We hope you enjoy joining in.

Phew! Are you feeling warmed up now?

This year at F@CT we are finding out about God's promises. We know that God always keeps his promises but what are they?

Today's promise is...

God protects us

We've got an amazing Bible story today with some people with some pretty strange names. Let's listen to the story and find out how God protected three men who followed God.

Isn't that a fantastic story! God protected Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 

It says in the Bible 

I am the Lord your God.
    I am holding your right hand.
And I tell you, ‘Don’t be afraid.
    I will help you.’

Isaiah 41: 13

There are lots of stories in the Bible where God has protected people. Do you know the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den? What about when God protected Noah and his family in the ark? Or when Jesus protected the disciples when he stopped the storm?

What does it mean for us today when we say "God protects us?" Does it mean we don't need to wear our cycle helmet when we ride our bikes? Certainly not! When someone loves and cares for us, they give us rules and teach us how to be safe - just like a parent teaching us to cross the road carefully or not to play near a hot stove. 

God has given us lots of good rules to follow to protect us and he sent the Holy Spirit to help us too. It doesn't mean that difficult things don't happen to people who love and follow God, but if they do, God is with them.

Craft

At F@CT, we love to make things to remind us about what we have learned about God. 

Today you could make a shield to remind you that God loves and protects us. 

What would you use to make your shield? Cardboard?  Kitchen foil? Paper and pens?

Prayer

Maybe you've used kitchen foil to make your shield. You'll need a small piece of kitchen foil for our prayers today.

From Flame: Creative

Take a piece of kitchen foil (not too big)

Hold your foil shiny side up and thank God for all the good things you have in your life.

Gently scrunch the foil up (not too tight as we are smoothing it out again). Think about the times when we have got things wrong and say sorry to God.

Smooth out your foil again. Thank God that he forgives us and loves us so much.

Scrunch up your foil into a shape that reminds you of someone or something to want to pray for. Maybe it could be a letter to remind you of someone's name.

We're going to finish our time together on the blog today with another song. We going to sing out loud that God is BIGGER THAN BIG!

Thank you for coming over to the blog and joining in with F@CT Online. We hope you have lots of fun at school this week. 

We are now able to meet together on Sunday mornings at church and if you are primary school age, you can join us in the church hall during the morning service for games, stories and crafts as we ask lots of questions about prayer. 

If you would like to join us on Sunday mornings, please book ahead here.

May F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT online! We are feeling excited today that we can come together and celebrate online AND in church! 

Let's start with one of our most favourite F@CT songs, My Lighthouse. God is our lighthouse, showing us the way when things get stormy. In church, we aren't allowed to sing at the moment but we will be doing the actions. If you are at home, I hope you sing extra loud for us!

This year, our theme for F@CT is...

God Keeps His Promises

We started looking at this all the way back in January when we heard the story of Anna and Simeon.  Each month we will be looking at a different promises that God has made.

This month, the promise is 

God is always with us

How do we know that God made this promise? Jesus said it! Let's watch the video and hear what happened to Jesus and the disciples after the amazing events of Easter Sunday.

Isn't that amazing! God is always with us. 

Jesus said...

Do you feel like God is always with you? 

That can be a tricky thing when we can't see him. We have a guest today who is really good at explaining things we find tricky about God. His name is Douglas. Let's listen to what he has to say about this.

At F@CT, we love to make things and play games that remind us of what we have learnt about God.

Today we're going to make pop-up puppets that can say "Peekaboo!"

Just like Douglas was saying about remembering that God is with us even though we can't see him.

You can use a paper cup and a paper straw or lolly stick to make your puppet and you can create whichever character you like to be hiding in your cup. Maybe you could make two characters and stick them back to back on the straw so that nobody knows who will pop up and say "Peekaboo!"

Here are some ideas...

I like how they have decorated the cup as well.

I like the paper grass they added to this cup.

https://www.craftprojectideas.com/pop-up-bunny/

Prayer

We can talk to God in lots of different ways, We can talk out loud or in our heads. We can say what's on our minds and just chat or we can use words that other people have written. 

Our prayer today is actually a Psalm in the Bible. People have been using the Psalms as prayers for over 2,500 years. Psalm 139 is all about how well God knows us and that he is always with us - even if we go to space! We can listen to the Psalm and say a big AMEN to agree that God is amazing.

This version of Psalm 139 comes from the book "Always Near Me" by Susie Poole.

AMEN!

We're finishing F@CT today with another favourite that we know well - Our God is a GREAT BIG GOD! We can sing to God that He is more amazing than we could imagine but He still knows us and loves us and we are part of His amazing plan. 

Thank you for joining in with F@CT Online today. We hope you have had fun and learnt more about God.

Next week, we will be starting to look at prayer. We hope you come back each week and find out more about talking and listening to God.

We hope you have a great week.

March F@CT

 

Hi everyone and welcome to F@CT Online. We are so glad that you can join us here as we have fun together learning more about God. 

We love to sing and dance at F@CT so let's start with one of our favourite songs. You can join in with the actions and singing as we praise God. We can always trust Him to lead us through troubled times as He is our Lighthouse. 

We've got a special visitor to F@CT today and she is called Barbara. She hasn't been to F@CT before but she has heard lots of good things about it. She spoke to Emy over Zoom to find out more.

Thanks Barbara and Emy. That helped us understand a bit more about Lent. 

(Emy would like to point out that she only gave up television for Lent and that she does still watch it. She particularly enjoys watching The Deep on CBBC.)

Lent is a time when God is inviting us to get closer to him. When you hear about people giving something up for Lent or trying something new, that is the reason. Sometimes there might be things that are getting in the way of getting closer to God.

 

We have a story to watch together about someone who was excited to hear about Jesus coming to visit and Jesus invited him to come and meet with him. The surprising thing about this story is the person who Jesus was inviting. He had lots of things in his life which could have stopped him getting close to God. His name was Zacchaeus.

What a great story and it's a fantastic story to hear in Lent. Jesus is inviting EVERYONE to come and meet with him at Easter and to hear the good news of Easter day. He knows when we get things wrong but he loves us anyway and he wants us to say sorry so nothing will get in the way of our relationship with our amazing Father God. 

Activity

We love getting creative at F@CT to help us remember a story so today we are going to be making climbing characters, just like Zacchaeus climbing a tree in today's story.

You can find out how to make your own climbing character here. Maybe you can make a Zacchaeus to climb or maybe you could draw yourself and imagine you were there, climbing the tree to try to see Jesus.

Prayer

Today 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 heard how awesome God is and so we're going to praise God together again with this brilliant song. Here are some cheeky pandas to help us sing it...

Thanks for joining us to celebrate F@CT together today. We hope you have a great week and at Christchurch we are praying for all of  you who are going back to school (or continuing going to school but with lots more friends). 

Please pop back next week as we continue to follow the adventures of the Israelites as they make their way towards the Promised Land. 

February F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! It's great that you've been able to join us today as we have fun together and learn about God.

At F@CT we love to praise God together with singing, actions and dancing. We hope this song gets you up and moving as we praise God together.

At church over the past few weeks, we have been learning all about generosity.

Our story today is about when Jesus showed amazing generosity. His friends and followers were feeling really hungry and he gave them not just enough to eat but enough that everyone was full up and there were leftovers. 

This story starts with a little boy who was generous enough to share his packed lunch with Jesus. Although, I do wonder how much he wanted to eat his packed lunch ("Oh mum - not bread and fish again!") as he still had it left at teatime!

Let's watch this Lego video and find out more...

Wow! Jesus is amazing! He was so generous when he fed all those people. 

When we follow God we follow Jesus' example of how to live so...

How can we be more generous?

Lizzie has been puzzling over this question and she decided to give Supergranny a call to ask for some help. 

Activities

We can have lots of fun as we remember the story of when Jesus was so generous feeding all those people with only 5 loaves and 2 fish.

Here's a Chat Mat you can print and colour.

You can download it here

A Flapping Fish game

You can make your own racing game with fish cut out from newspaper and a book or a magazine to flap them along. Maybe you can race them with someone else in your family. Maybe you can make a track around the room and time to see how long it takes for you to move your fish along.

We had fun practising this one...

Prayer

Let's take a moment to be still and quiet to talk to God.

Supergranny told us all about the Fruit of the Spirit and how we can be more generous but it isn't always easy. Have a look at our Fruit of the Spirit picture. Is there one that you need to ask God to help you with this week?

Dear God

Thank you that you are so generous to us. You give us so many good things and love us so much.

Sorry when we aren't generous, when we put ourselves first.

Help us to remember your generosity and to be more generous with how we love others.

Amen

You could colour this in and put it up in your house to remind you about how we can be generous to others.

You can download this picture here.

We have this brilliant song to help us remember the different Fruits of the Spirit. 

We hope you have fun joining in.

Thank you for joining us for F@CT Online this week and we hope you have a great week.

 We will be back next week continuing our adventures following the incredible story of Moses.

January F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! We hope you all had a joyful, peaceful Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Today we are going to be looking at two people who never appear in a Nativity play but were there just after Jesus was born. They are called Anna and Simeon.

Let's watch this to hear who they were.

Anna and Simeon were both amazing, faithful people. They believed that God would keep his promises to them. They both got to meet Jesus, just as God had told them they would. 

Can you imagine how excited they must have been? People had been waiting hundreds of years for Jesus to arrive and they actually got to see him. 

It's the beginning of a new year and last year was very unexpected. We had lots of strange, difficult moments. As we look towards this new year ahead of us, we can be absolutely sure of one thing, just like the story above told us. 

It's this...

God keeps his promises.

What do God's promises look like for us? God has promised us lots of things in the Bible.

Here are nine of God's promises for us.

You can download it here

Activity

You can download, colour and cut out the sheet above. Maybe you would like to stick God's promises up somewhere in your house. You could stick them near a mirror or maybe on a notice board.

Maybe you could decorate a promise jar like this...

This year you may hear new promises that God is making for you. You could add them to the jar.

Prayer

Two of the promises above are about prayer. They say that when we pray God listens to us and is close to us.

Choose one of the promises on the sheet and spend a quiet moment thinking about it. Maybe you could draw your own picture about what that promise means to you. 

Thank you God that you are with us as we travel together into the New Year.

Help us to remember your promises for us.

Amen

We've got a song we can sing together called "All through History". We know God is faithful and keeps His promises as there are lots of stories in the Bible when He has shown that. 

This song looks at some of those stories. 

Let's praise God that he is faithful and trustworthy with singing and maybe some dancing too...

Thank you for joining us for F@CT online. We hope you've had fun today finding out more about God.

Next week we are going to be starting to look at the amazing story of Moses. He went on lots of adventures with God. We're going to have lots of fun finding out all about him.

December FACT

 

Hello and welcome to December F@CT. We are getting really excited about Christmas now. Are you?

The Three Kings Advent-ure

This week we've started following the three kings for our very own online Advent Calendar as they make their way to find Jesus. Have you seen where they've already been?

Today they are going to catch the bus!

Come back each day and find out where they've travelled to.

Oh look! That's a big present. Do you think I should open it now or wait for Christmas?

It doesn't look like I'm very good at waiting for Christmas. What would Christmas look like if we didn't wait? Do you think it might look a bit like this?

Do you have an Advent calendar? Advent is a special time of year and it's all about waiting for a special arrival. 

People were waiting for Jesus for hundreds of years - imagine how big their Advent calendars would have been!

Prophets in the Old Testament told everyone that Jesus was coming. 700 years before Jesus was born, Micah said the Messiah (or God's chosen one) would be born in Bethlehem and Isaiah said he would be from the family of King David.

Jesus is called "The Light of the World" and before he came we were in darkness.

Isaiah was talking about the coming of Jesus when he said

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light.

They lived in a land of shadows,

but now light is shining on them.

Isaiah 9 : 2

Advent is a time of waiting for that light but for us we know who is coming on Christmas Day.

Have you played Hide and Seek recently? Maybe our waiting in Advent is like the time when you are hiding in a dark place waiting to be found. Do you stay still and quiet? You know it's going to be funny when the light shines on you because you've been found. In our house, when someone is found after hiding for a long time, there is laughing and chatting.

We are waiting in the dark in Advent, waiting for the light of Christmas Day. When that light shines we are so happy that Jesus has come!

Activity

Maybe you could have a game of Hide and Seek today. When you are waiting in a dark place you can remember what we have been talking about today. 

Have fun!

We've got a fantastic Chat Mat for you to colour and chat about with your family.

You can download it here

Prayer

Let's take a moment to be still and quiet. We can thank God that He sent Jesus to be the Light of the world. 

You can use your own words or you can use these words to help you. 

Dear God,

Thank you for the light you created.

Thank you that you saw your beautiful world needed another kind of light.

Thank you that you sent Jesus to be that light to the world.

Please help us to be lights to those around us.

Amen

We've got a Christmas song to listen to and join in with today. Let's listen together as we praise God for that glorious night.

We hope you've had fun celebrating Advent with us today. Pop back every day and you can see where the Three Kings have been on their travels. 

We would normally be getting ready for our Christmas Eve Christingle service and the good news is that we are getting ready but this year all the fun of the service will be online. We are packing up Christingle kits so that every household can join in and make one together during the online service on Christmas Eve. 

If you would like to book a Christingle pack, you can click here.  

November F@CT

 

Hi everyone and welcome to F@CT online. We spent October, here on the blog, thinking of things to be thankful for . Today we are really thankful that we able to meet together here online and in church as well. However you are joining in today, we hope you have lots of fun learning more about God. 

Today we are talking about wearing armour.

ARMOUR?! That's not what I usually wear to school!

This is a special sort of armour that Paul talks about in the Bible. Let's watch this video to find out more...

When Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, there would have been lots of Roman soldiers around so that the people he was writing to would have been able to picture what he was talking about when he told them to wear The Armour of God.

Today, we don't wear armour very much so what could we use instead? 

Emy has found a Roman soldier in her garden to help us work out what the Armour of God might look like today (with a bit of video magic).

Let's get creative

Can you make your own Shield of Faith? You could draw it on a piece of paper or make it from some cardboard from your recycling. It could be small or it could be big. You can decorate it with things that remind you of your faith. That might be Bible verses. It might be pictures or people or places that have helped you get to know God better. We'd love to see pictures of your Shield of Faith.

The Armour of God Prayer

Jesus today I put on the helmet of salvation.

Please protect my mind from bad thoughts and help me focus on things that are good. Please protect my eyes and keep them looking up to you.

I put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Please guard my heart, make everything that comes in or out of my heart be good to you. Help my heart be open to you and led by the holy spirit.

I put on the belt of truth

Help me love the truth. Help me to tell the truth and hear the truth. Lord, make me more like you. 

I put on the gospel of peace shoes

Everywhere I go Lord, help me bring peace. Help me be peaceful. Guide what I do and where I go. Prepare me to tell other people about you. 

I put on the shield of faith

Build a strong faith in me. With faith, all things are possible. Protect me from any attacks from the enemy.

I pick up the sword of the spirit

Put your words in my heart Lord. Lead me and guide me so that I am good at all I do. Let your words change my character. Give me boldness and knowledge to love and help others.

Amen. 

There's a great song about wearing the Armour of God called "God Suit On". It looks like these two had great fun singing the song and doing the actions.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you had fun putting your God Suit on!

A little reminder...

This week is the last week to drop off your filled shoeboxes for Love In A Box. If you have any to bring in, please pop them in to church this week. 

Thank you.