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.

The Baby in the Basket

 Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. We are spending more time in our homes again at the moment but we are glad that we can still learn about God together here online. We can also talk to God any time and any place.

We are starting a new adventure together today as we begin to look at the life of Moses. He led an incredible life with God. It is full of surprises and adventure and we are looking forward to sharing the stories with you. What do you think of the new look blog? Moses's adventures involve quite a lot of water so it's a good background to have as we start finding out about him. 

Moses first adventure began right at the very beginning of his life when he was still only a baby and water plays a big part in this story as it happens on a river.

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

There's a song about this story too. You may recognise some of the tune.

What an incredible beginning to Moses' life! How do you think Moses' mum felt when she decided to put him into the basket on the river? It must have been a very difficult decision and I think it must have helped that his big sister stayed close to see what happened. Moses' mum must have trusted God that her baby would be alright.

How do you think Moses' big sister felt when she was able to run home and fetch her mum? She was able to say that her little brother was safe AND that he was being looked after by the princess AND that the princess wanted her to come and look after him. How amazing is that!

God had good plans for Moses.

Moses's mum showed that she trusted God. We can trust God too even when we don't know what is going to happen. God will always be there for us as he loves us so much.

Trust the Lord with all your heart.
    Don’t depend on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

Our Activity Book

 

Have you received you Moses activity book yet? If you haven't got one yet and you usually get post from church then it will be with you in the next couple of days. If you are new to the Christchurch Kids blog and would like an activity book, please email Emy at childrenandfamilies@christchurch-clevedon.org.uk

We can have a look in our activity books now and find the pages about the baby in the basket. 

Prayer

Cupcake case prayers from Flame Creative

We can talk to God about anything and we can trust Him that he knows what is going to happen next and he will take care of us. 

Today, as we are thinking of Moses floating in the river in his basket, we are going to write our prayers on cupcake cases. You can just write a word or draw a picture. Maybe it's something to say thank you for, maybe it's to ask for help if you are worried about something or maybe it's to say sorry for something. 

Take your cupcake cases and float them in a sink or bowl of water. We can talk to God about what we have written down as we think of how He looked after baby Moses in the basket on the river.

We've got a great song with some fancy footwork now based on the verse from Proverbs above. We can trust in the Lord! Maybe you would like to have a go at the actions and do your own fancy footwork. 

Thank you for popping by today. We hope you've had fun finding out about Moses. Join us again next week for the next part of his incredible journey.

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!

Let there be light

Hello and welcome to Sunday on Christchurch Kids. Have you heard the birds singing today? Why don't you open a window and listen for a moment? We are spending our days a bit differently at the moment and it will probably feel a bit odd. Today we are going to be looking at God, who always stays the same. He is the God who created our amazing world and who loves us. We can see His creation all around us and it can remind us of His love for us.

Here is a fantastic retelling of the story of creation from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Have another listen. What is your favourite part of the story?

Feeding the birds

There are so many ways to celebrate God's amazing creations. Why don't you have a go at creating a bird feeder? There are lots of great ideas online.

These first two ideas are quite simple.

https://teachbesideme.com/homemade-window-bird-feeder/

https://happyhooligans.ca/milk-jug-bird-feeder/

Or you can have lots of fun decorating the bird feeder. Can you see how they have used bottle caps to make the eyes?

https://www.redtedart.com/juice-carton-crafts-owl-bird-feeder/

If you are wondering what to feed the birds, there is a great guide from the RSPB about which food scraps can be used safely. You can see it here.

We have a colouring page that you can download here. God created the birds and tiniest insects and he also created the stars and the planets. This is Bible verse about how space can remind us how amazing God is.

Prayer

There is an East African prayer talking to God about His creation.

All you big things, bless the Lord

Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria

The Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain

Fat baobabs and shady mango trees

All eucalyptus and tamarind trees

Bless the Lord.

Praise and extol Him for ever and ever

All you tiny things, bless the Lord.

Wriggling tadpoles and mosquito larvae,

Flying locusts and water drops,

Millet seeds and dried dagaa,

Bless the Lord.

Praise and extol Him for ever and ever

Can you write your own version of this prayer? What big things would you include? What tiny things would you include?
(to "extol" means to "praise enthusiastically)

And finally, one of our favourite songs from F@CT all about our Creator God...

We would love to see your bird feeders or your prayers. You can see how to send pictures of your creations in the right hand side column. You can add comments to this post too. We'd love to hear from you. 

The Lord is my shepherd

Hello and welcome to our first Sunday on Christchurch Kids and Happy Mothering Sunday.  Isn't it lovely to see the blue skies and sunshine outside. Today we are looking at Psalm 23. The psalms are a book in the Bible of poetry and songs and today's psalm is all about how God looks after us. Here is a great version of this psalm so have a listen...

There are so many fantastic elements in this psalm. Why don't you have another listen? What are your favourite things in Psalm 23?

A Sensory Hunt

Why don't you go on a sensory hunt around your house and try to find things from the psalm?

Can you ...

... find something as soft as a lamb?

... run your fingers through some grass?

... listen to running water and imagine the stream running through the meadow?

... collect some "wonderful things"?

... stay still as long as you can and imagine you are lying in the grassy meadow?

We have a colouring page to download here. When your page is coloured in, you could put it up somewhere in your house to remind you that God is looking after you. 

We also have a wordsearch to try here  ( and the answers are here).

Prayer

We can use the words of Psalm 23 as a prayer and you can add actions to help remember the words.

The Lord is my shepherd (point to self)

 I have all that I need. (Stretch arms out wide.)

He lets me rest in green meadows. (put palms together at one side of face)

 He leads me beside peaceful streams. (Make wavelike motions with hands.)

He renews my strength. (Make muscles.)

He guides me along right paths (walk in place)

as He has promised. (Point up.) 

Even when I go through the deepest darkness, (cup hands over eyes)

 I will not be afraid (hug self)

For you are close beside me. (Point left and right.)

Your shepherd's rod and staff protect me. (Cross fists in front of you.)

You prepare a banquet for me, where all my enemies can see me (Pretend to eat.)

you welcome me as an honoured guest. (Touch hands to head.)

 My cup overflows with blessings. (Cup hands in front of you.)

I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life (turn in a circle)

 and your house will be my home as long as I live. (Stretch arms up high.)

Amen.

And just for fun, here are some lambs to sing you a song about following God. Look out for the grey one - he's a bit cheeky!

We would love to see your colouring sheets or what "wonderful things" you found. Have a look in the right hand column for our contact details. You can check back here on Wiggle Wednesday for a song to dance and sing to. We hope you have a great week.