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.

October F@CT

 

Hi everyone and welcome to F@CT Online! We are really excited today as we are not only having F@CT online but we are also having F@CT in church as well. We are feeling really thankful that we are able to meet together in different ways, still able to have fun and learn about God wherever we are.

As we are thinking about being thankful, that is today's theme as it is a time in the church called Harvest when we are thankful for all the things that God has given us.

Our Bible verse today comes from Psalm 107 verse 1

Thank the Lord because He is good.

His love continues forever.

What would our day look like if we were really thankful for all the amazing things we have? 

Maybe it would look a bit like this...

When we are in church, we aren't allowed to sing at the moment but we are going to joining in with the actions to this song together. If you are at home, you can join in with the actions too and sing as loud as you like! 

Let's praise God together.

Maybe you would like to make a Lego model of something that you are thankful for today?

Prayer

We are going to be making Thank You prayer posters today.  

Who do you think made this prayer poster? It's someone who loves wearing colourful, stripey socks, has a large family and loves energetic sports likes skateboarding and football.

That's right! This is Supergranny's prayer poster. She is feeling thankful for her family, her favourite sports, her holiday to the beach, her favourite socks, Froggy Bear and her Bible, which helps her learn more about God.

You can cut pictures out from magazines or newspapers, draw your own pictures, or write words to make your prayer poster. You can put it up in your house and add things to it every day. 

Let's finish today with one of our favourite songs. I find this one quite tricky to sing and do the actions at the same time, even when I have friends like these to help me remember which action comes next!

Let's join in and have fun remembering how AMAZING God is!

At Harvest, one of the ways we can thank God for the fantastic things He has given us is by sharing with others. Here are a couple of ways we can share with others at church at the moment.

Make Lunch

The Make Lunch team has been helping families in our town this year when lots of people have found it difficult to have enough food. This has been a fantastic way to show people that God cares about them. We can help Make Lunch by bringing in the items that they need to help others. This year, we have been asked if we can bring in these items...

Pasta

Pasta sauces

Nappies (size 3, 4 or 5)

Wet wipes

Toilet rolls

Tins of rice pudding

Ready Made Custard

Bottles of Squash

Tinned Vegetables

There will be a table in the foyer next to the office door in church for your donations. Please bring them as soon as possible.

Love in a box

We already getting excited about Christmas this year and we are going to be collecting filled shoeboxes again. You can download the form with all the information about what to put in the shoeboxes here.

Christmas may seem a little while away but shoeboxes are sent out at the beginning of November.

We hope you've had great fun today feeling thankful. We will be back here on the blog next week finding out about more adventures with The Story Keepers.

                

September Fact

Hi everyone and welcome to F@CT Online. We can't meet together yet for our F@CT service so we thought we would bring it to you in your own home. We've got some familiar faces and favourite songs. We'll have craft ideas to help us explore some fantastic Bible stories and prayer suggestions for you to try at home.

Today, Emy spoke to Lizzie online. Maybe you've been speaking to friends and family like this too. 

Let's see how they got on...

Here's one of our favourites. You can join in with the actions and sing along.

Here's our Bible story for today. Look at all the changes that Moses faced in his life. God was with him every step of the way.

(If you want to know more about Moses, you can read all about him in your Bible. There is also a fantastic film about Moses called The Prince of Egypt. It's currently available to watch on Amazon Prime.)

Here's our new song. You can sing along with the words and maybe you can make up your own actions. 

Make your own Lighthouse

" My Lighthouse" is great song to sing with really fun actions. It is also a fantastic picture to help us think about God. The lighthouse never moves and it is always there to help anyone out at sea. It's there when the seas are calm and it's there when a huge storm is raging. It is a steady light to help people stay safe.

Just like the lighthouse, God is always there whatever is going on around us. We can always trust Him that he will show us the way. In Psalm 119 the Bible says...

Your word is a lamp to my feet 

and a light to my path.

You can have a go at making your own lighthouse to remind you that God is with you every day.

You could have a go at making a model. 

(These children have used battery operated tealights so their lighthouses re really safe.)

You could draw a picture.

You could even make a lighthouse from Lego.

If you do make a lighthouse we would really love to see pictures of what you have made. It would be great to share the pictures on here. 

You can email your pictures to Emy at 

sundaychildrenandfamiliescoordiantor@christchurch-clevedon.org.uk

Prayer

We can talk to God about anything at anytime. Sometimes it helps us to have a suggestion for what we want to talk to God about. Today we are going to use some dice. You probably have a dice tucked away in a game somewhere.

We can use the numbers we roll on the dice to give us a suggestion for what we would like to talk to God about. You can pray on your own or as a family.

1 - Your family

2 - Our church

3 - Our town

4 - Your nursery or school

5 - Our country

6 - Our world

We hope you have had lots of fun with us for our first F@CT Online. 

Next week we are going to be starting to watch a series together called The Story Keepers. It's a great story about Ben the baker and his family. They live in the Year 64AD and the Romans are in charge. At that time nobody was allowed to be a Christian so we follow the adventures of Ben and his family as they spread the good news about Jesus while avoiding the Roman soldiers.

We hope you have a great week. 

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.