Prayer - We can talk to God anywhere!

 Hello and welcome to our final week on Christchurch Kids.

 We are going to be taking a break over the summer holidays and we are really hoping that in September we will be more able to meet back in church for fun on Sunday mornings.

We hope that our blog has helped you learn more about God and have fun too. We hope that is has started some conversations with your family about what it means to make God part of your every day life.

A big part of making God part of your day is keeping in touch with prayer. 

We've looked at all sorts of things about prayer over the past few weeks...

We can...

...tell God how amazing He is.

...ask for God's help.

... say the Lord's prayer.

... say sorry.

...say thank you.

...listen to God.

... talk to God about our worries.

Have you got a Bible in your house? Have a look at the stories in there and see if you can notice where people pray.

In a den of lions! (Daniel) Inside a giant fish! (Jonah) In a garden or on top of a mountain (Jesus)

In a house (the disciples), in a palace (Nehemiah), on a ship and by the seashore (Paul).

We can pray ANYWHERE

and we can talk to God 

about ANYTHING!

The Bible says

Never stop praying.

1 Thessalonians 5 : 17

Activity

We can make a prayer poster today. You can use a big bit of paper or card as your background and cut out pictures, draw pictures or write words on it about anything you want to talk to God about. 

You could make your own prayer poster and put it up in your room. You could add to it over the summer as you talk to God about all sorts of things. 

or

You could make a family prayer poster  and put it up where everyone can see it and you can add things to it together and then pray about those things together too.

Prayer

Did you receive your "101 ways to start a conversation with God" in the post? 

If you didn't, you can download it here

Why not try a new idea on the poster every day in the summer holidays?

Which one will you try today?

We've got a fun song today about prayer. What do you think the actions would look like?

We hope you have joining in with this song.

Thanks for joining in today and we hope you get closer to God over the summer as you explore prayer. Keep chatting to God, He wants to hear from you.

We hope you have a fantastic summer with lots of fun and time to rest too. 

We hope to see you at Christchurch in September. 

Prayer - God listens to our worries

 Hello and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. We hope you have had a good week and aren't feeling too tired as we come towards the end of term - It's nearly the summer holidays!

We are continuing to look at prayer this week. We've looked at lots of different things we can pray about and today we have a story about a king called Jehoshaphat. He faced a difficult situation and he prayed to God for help.

We may not be facing 3 armies about to attack but we might have situations that spring up in our lives that make us feel worried , upset, or scared. We can talk to God about it and ask for his help. 

Did you notice that Jehoshaphat didn't just ask for help? He said thank you to God for the good things God had done and he praised God. When the army went into battle, the sent the musicians ahead to sing songs of how great God is. 

Jehoshaphat and the people didn't just ask for help, they kept their thoughts fixed on God with thank you prayers and songs too. They knew God was with them.

Activity

When we find ourselves in an unexpected ,tricky situations we can say a quick prayer to ask God for help. Sometimes these are called arrow prayers.

Today, we are going to make paper aeroplanes to represent our arrow prayers. You could write your prayers on them before you fly them.

There are some great paper aeroplanes you can try out here.

Prayer

Give your worries to the Lord.
    He will take care of you.

Psalm 55 : 22

We can talk to God about our worries and any difficult situations we face. If you do have worries, it's also great to talk to an adult you trust as well. God puts people into our lives who can help us.

We are going to use bubbles to help us pray today. If you have things that you are worried about, you can talk to God about them and blow your bubbles and watch them float away. 

If we feel nervous or anxious, taking deep breaths can help us feel calm. If you feel like this, you can imagine that you are trying to blow an enormous bubble. If you have your bubbles with you, you can give it a go. How big a bubble can you make? 

We've got a song that we love singing at F@CT. The words come from the Bible when Joshua and the Israelites faced a battle they thought they couldn't win. God told them they could be brave as He would be with them. 

We hope you enjoy joining in with the actions.

Thanks for joining us today here on our blog. 

Next week will be our last post on here and our last Christchurch Kids group in church as we are then taking a break for the summer holidays. We hope you have lots of fun over the summer. If you would like to come to church in the holidays with your family, there are activity bags available for anyone who would like one.

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.

Prayer - What Would Jesus Do?

 Hi Christchurch Kids! Welcome back to our blog. We hope you are enjoying the sunshine now that we can play outside without getting cold and wet!

We're continuing to look at prayer today. Prayer is something that people have found tricky for a long time. The disciples must have found it a curious topic too as they asked Jesus, "How should we pray?"

Jesus gave us lots of examples of when he prayed and what he prayed about. Did you know that Jesus even prayed for us!

Let's watch the video and find out more...

When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he gave them the answer that we now call "The Lord's Prayer." When Jesus said the Lord's Prayer, he didn't mean that we could only use those words. It is more like a recipe of that sort of things you can put in a prayer.

Let's have a closer look at the Lord's Prayer

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name.

We can praise God and tell him that he's amazing!

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. 

We want the world to be good just like God planned. We want to follow God's plans for us.

Give us today our daily bread. 

We can ask God for the things we need - and that other people will have the things they need.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. 

We can say sorry to God when we get things wrong and ask Him to help us forgive other people when they get things wrong too.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. 

We can ask God to keep us safe from things that could lead us away from following Him.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. 

We can tell God again that he is amazing FOREVER!  He is in charge.

Amen. 

Activity

That's a lot of things to remember when we are praying. We can make something to help us remember the different things we can pray about. We can make a prayer bracelet where different colour beads remind us of different things. If you don't have beads, you can make your own from Fimo or even paper. Here's how to make paper beads. If you don't want to wear a bracelet, you could thread the beads on a string and tie them onto a bookmark or a keyring.

Purple bead = Purple is a royal colour. This reminds us that God is special and Amazing

Blue bead = This reminds us that we want the Earth to be as good as heaven. We want to follow God's ways.

Brown bead = This reminds of asking for our "daily bread" as we can ask for things we need.

White bead = We can say sorry to God. When God forgives our sins they are completely wiped away and we are clean again (Maybe you can imagine a totally clean whiteboard!)

Dark/black bead = The dark colour reminds us of the things that can lead us away from following God. We can ask for God to keep us safe.

Yellow bead = Yellow reminds us of the colour of a crown (you could use a gold bead instead). God is King. He is amazing and He is in charge.

Prayer

Today, let's practice saying the Lord's Prayer. You can say it slowly, pausing between each line as you think about what those words mean.

We are going to finish our time on the blog today with a fantastic song about prayer from Awesome Cutlery. It's got some great words and we hope you enjoy singing along.

Next week, we have F@CT Online here on the blog and in the church. We will have a story, songs with actions, prayers and crafts - all the usual F@CT fun! We are continuing to look at the amazing promises God has made us. We would love to see you there! 

If you would like to come to F@CT in church, please book your place on the website here.

Pentecost

 Hello and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. 

Happy Birthday!

Who's birthday is it? It's the church's birthday! Today is the day we celebrate a special day called Pentecost. It's the day when the disciples first went out and started telling people about Jesus. BUT... they didn't go out on their own. Jesus had promised a gift but what would it be? Jo from the Little Worship Company is going to tell us more. What is in her story bag today?

Wow! What an amazing day that must have been!

We are going to celebrate Pentecost by getting creative because we love making things to help us remember what we have heard.

In the story today we heard how the Holy Spirit sounded like a mighty wind so we are going to be making our own kites!

Have you made a kite fly on a day without much wind? You have to run really fast and put so much hard work in. It does fly a little but not a lot. When the wind blows, you can fly your kite with hardly any effort at all. 

When the Holy Spirit helps us, it's like the wind helping the kite on a windy day. When we try to do things on our own it can be like running along trying to fly the kite without using the wind. Think about the amazing things the kite could do with the help of the wind - hovering high up or looping the loop. it certainly couldn't do those things on it's own. The Holy Spirit helps us do amazing things too. The Holy Spirit helps us to do the things God has asked us to do.

Here's some instructions to make a paper kite using just a piece of paper, a stapler and some string.

Prayer

Do you write thank you letters after you've had a present from someone? Maybe you make someone a thank you picture? 

It's always good to say thank you when someone has given us a good gift and we can say "Thank you" to God for sending the Holy Spirit - the best present ever!

How would you like to say thank you to God today? You could say it, or sing it, or dance it, or draw it?

We've got a great song today all about the Holy Spirit. We hope you have fun singing along and dancing as we celebrate Pentecost.

Thanks for joining us here on the blog this week and we hope you have a great day celebrating Pentecost. 

We have exciting news! This week we will be starting a Christchurch Kids group in Christchurch on Sunday mornings - Hurray! It will be happening in the hall during the morning service for primary school aged children. We will be sitting at tables with our siblings with resources on each table. Adults will be wearing masks but primary school aged children won't need to. We will be having lots of fun finding out more about prayer with stories, games and crafts. 

If you would like to come along, you will need to book a place as we have a maximum number of 15 places each Sunday. You can book a place by clicking here.

We're really sorry that we can't run Bubbles or Rapidz at the moment.

We will still be here on the blog too until the summer holidays so you can find out more about prayer here as well and chat about it with your family.

( Happy Birthday Photo by Robert Anderson on Unsplash)

Palm Sunday

 Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. We hope you've had a great week and that you are enjoying being back at school. 

Today is a day for celebration! It is Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of a special time on the church called Holy Week, which is the week before Easter Sunday.

Here's the story of what happened on Palm Sunday.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in the crowds in Jerusalem when Jesus rode past on a donkey? 

There was cheering and waving of branches (just like when we wave flags at sports matches or when the Queen arrives for a visit). People were excited as they realised that Jesus was the one that they had been waiting for for hundreds of years. They knew what was written in the Old Testament and they could see it happening right before their eyes!

Towards the end of the video, we can see that the religious leaders were very uncomfortable with what the people were saying about Jesus. This was the start of what eventually led to the events of Good Friday.

We can celebrate with our own palm branches today - but we are going to make them out of newspaper!

Here are some simple instructions to make your palm branches (newspaper trees)

This video also shows you how to make newspaper trees. Look how tall they made one!

Prayer

Today we are celebrating that Jesus is our Saviour, the one who was promised in the Old Testament, but we are also looking ahead across the week. Holy Week is full of drama and it eventually leads to Good Friday but then also Easter Sunday.

Take a moment today to share with your family what Easter means to you. What does the word Easter make you think of? Are there things you remember about Easter celebrations past, things you did, things you ate or maybe a part of the Easter story itself that sticks with you? 

We can pray a prayer of thanks with our family today. We can thank God for sending Jesus.

We've got a great Palm Sunday song to share together today that tells us the story. We hope you have fun dancing around to this one. Maybe you can wave your newspaper branches as you dance.

Thank you for joining us today. We are looking forward to our Easter Sunday celebrations next week with a visit from No Strings Attached and a new play from the children at Christchurch as we join in with the rest of the church at www.christchurch-clevedon.org.uk

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. 

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.