Prayer - We can listen to God

 Hello and welcome back to our Christchurch Kids blog, We hope you've had a great week.

Recently, we've been looking at prayer and the sorts of things that we can talk to God about. The thing about prayer is that it's not just talking to God but listening to Him as well. Prayer helps us be close to God. Can you imagine having a friend who only ever talked to you but never listened to a word you said? That would be a bit strange. God wants us to listen to Him as well as talk to him - He's got things he wants to tell us. 

Let's listen to a story from the Bible about a boy called Samuel who became really good at listening to God, but it wasn't always like that...

Have you seen people praying when they just sit in silence? Sometimes they are thinking of what to say, or talking to God in their heads but sometimes they are listening. It's good to pray and ask God to help us listen to Him. 

Here is a story from the Little Shoots, Deep Roots blog about a time when this mum's two sons listened to God...

Giggling, my boys scurried into their beds. One up the ladder to the top bunk, the other underneath. Damp hair curled around their ears, smelling fresh from the bath. 

It was time to listen to God.  I asked them to repeat these words:

“Jesus, please help me to listen to you. Help my heart and mind to be quiet so I can hear you. Jesus, what would you like to say to me today?”

Then I reminded them that it was time to be quiet and wait for Jesus to respond, something that is very hard for small boys to do. 

But within a minute, my younger son said “I think he wants to say ‘I love you.’”

The older boy was discouraged because he hadn’t heard any whispers in his heart; he said his brain was too noisy. I encouraged him to ask God to help his brain be quiet.

His quiet whispers traveled from the top bunk to my ears, and straight to God’s heart: “God please help my brain to be quiet so I can hear what you have to say to me.”

Only a few seconds had passed when I saw his face poking out over the top of the bunk. With a smile that simultaneously held surprise, joy, and bashfulness, he told me what God had spoken to him.

“God said ‘I love you, Cubbie.'”

Both boys had an experience with God that evening but I believe it was the most meaningful to Cubbie, my 7 year old. He knows what it’s like to have an incredibly busy brain, one that is constantly coming up with ideas and plans. But in one simple heart-whisper, his heart and mind were brought to peace.

Isn't that a great story. It's even better that we get to share that story and be encouraged to listen to God as well.  God can talk to us if we listen just like He did for those boys.

There are lots of ways that God can talk to us:

• Through the Bible.
• Sometimes it's a whisper in our heart, like in the story above.
• It might be in a special dream or a picture that pops into your head.
• God might tell us things by giving a message for us to someone who we know and trust.
• Sometimes it can be the words to a Bible verse or a song remembered at just the right time.

If you think that God has spoken to you, talk it through with a grown-up you trust, just like Samuel did in our story today.  Eli helped Samuel to hear God's voice.  

A Game to play

We've been doing a lot of talking about listening so here's a game where we can practice our listening skills

Can you guess what animal is making the sound?

Colouring

God speaks to us through the Bible and so the better we know the Bible, the easier it is to hear God.

We've got some colouring pages that we have collected over the past year on our blog with lots of different Bible verses. Have a look through them. Is there one that that jumps out at you? Maybe that is what God wants to say to you today?

Click here for our colouring pages

Prayer

We can take a moment to be still and quiet and pray the prayer that the boys prayed in the story above. 

Jesus, please help me to listen to you. Help my heart and mind to be quiet so I can hear you. Jesus, what would you like to say to me today?

We've got a song to finish today which is great to help us get moving again after we've been sitting still and quiet. We can sing and dance and praise God that He is the only one we want to follow...

 We'll be back here next week with F@CT Online but you can also join us in church for our F@CT service. You don't need to book a space anymore so you can just pop along on Sunday morning at 10am to join in with F@CT . We'll be hearing a story, doing actions to songs, trying out prayers, making crafts and having fun learning more about God. 

Jesus calms the storm

 Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. We hope you had a fantastic Easter Sunday last week. Have you eaten all your eggs yet?

This week we are trying something a little different. We're going to hear about Jesus and Jo from the Little Worship Company is going to tell us the story. What will she have in her story bag today?

You can listen to the story with your family and then you can have a chat about the questions below. 

Talk Time

The stories in the Bible point us towards God. They tell us so many things. Now you have heard the story about Jesus calming the storm, have a chat to your family and see what you all think about it.

Here are some questions you can talk about...

What things make you feel worried? 

Do you think there are times when you need to feel peace?

What do you think the disciples felt like when the storm started? 

Why do you think Jesus wasn't worried by the storm?

What do you think Jesus wanted to show the disciples?

How does this make you feel about Jesus?

Are there any worries you would like to talk to God about and ask for his help to feel peace?

We have a Bible Chat Mat for you to download and colour today too. This is another great way to help you chat about the story with your family. 

You can download it here

Prayer

The story today showed us that Jesus is with us when things seem scary or difficult and he can bring us peace. We can feel calm because we know Jesus is with us.

Talk to God today about anything you are worried about, or maybe you know someone else who is worried about something. We can ask God to help us know He is with us whatever happens.

Our song today is about trusting God. Do you have your pointy fingers ready? This is a fun one to join in with the actions.

We hope you have a great time this week in your Easter holidays and we'll see you here next week. 

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.

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. 

Rooted and Fruited

Hi everyone! We hope you've had a great start to the summer holidays. Have you been out and about in any woods recently? Did you have a look at all the amazing trees? 

Today we are looking at Psalm 1 which talks about trees. Here are the verses for today.

How can we be like a tree? Larry is asking the same question today...

The children are hiding in this box here. 

Click on the video so you can watch them with Larry and Joy.

When a tree is planted in good soil and gets lots of water, it can grow deep roots. This means that the tree will grow well and be able to make fruit. When strong winds blow, the tree can staying standing.

If we spend time reading our Bibles and talking to God, we are growing roots too. We will be rooted with God. Our fruits will be the Fruits of the Spirit (which we talked about here). These fruits aren't apples or bananas but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

If we find things difficult, we will be rooted and we will remember God's good promises to us . We will be able to keep close to Him

Here's that verse again as our colouring page today. You can download it here.

Prayer

For our prayer time today, see if you can go outside and see a tree (or can you see on from your window?). Place your hand on the bark and look up at the branches. Think about those roots going deep down into the ground. 

Thank you God that you will always be there for us. Thank you that we can grow strong roots with you as you will always love us and we can always trust in you. 

Amen

Here's one of our favourite songs from F@CT.  You can join in with the actions.

We hope you've had a good time being a tree today. We'll be back next Sunday with more adventures from the book of Psalms.

What is a Psalm?

Hi everyone. Welcome to our new look Christchurch Kids blog. We're feeling excited about the summer and we're looking forward to having lots of fun. Here on the blog we are going to be hearing from our new friends, Larry and Joy, as they learn more about the book of Psalms.

Joy has found Larry looking at lots of cards and pictures. Let's find out more...

Thanks Larry and Joy. I hope you have fun making that card together. Maybe you could make a card for a friend today?

It was interesting to hear about King David writing the Psalms. We can find out more about him in this video.

The verse from Psalms that we are looking at today is from Psalm 136. 

We can use this Bible verse to help us pray today. We can spend a moment being quiet and thinking of the good things we have in our life. We can say thank you to God for all the good things. We can say thank you to God that His love continues for ever. He will always love us and we can trust that He will always be good. It's amazing!

This is the verse for our colouring page today as well. You can download it here.

We've got a special guest today. She's called Music Mae and she loves the Psalms. She has a fantastic song all about this amazing book of the Bible. You can sing along if you like.

Thanks for joining us today. Wiggle Wednesday is on holiday for the summer but there are lots of exciting things happening online that we can join in with. You can find out more about some ideas here.

We'll see you next week. I wonder what Larry and Joy will be up to!