How to teach kids about gratitude

Let's have a Loopy Lunch!

This lovely simple idea will have your kids thinking that you are the most fun person in the world, ever! This is going to get you some brownie points!

What you are going to do is make some sandwiches and drinks with your children, but with a difference. Using jam, for sweet sticky fun, make your sandwiches with your kids into as many different fun shapes as you can think of. You could cut out stars and moons, cars and balls, rockets and table tennis bats! Your only limit is your imagination.

Don't forget, keep any off cuts and make a point of putting them out for the birds, no waste!

For your drinks, you are going to get even sillier! Your juice or water will be poured from a teapot, and you will all drink out of the daftest things you can find. Use egg cups, serving spoons, saucepans or even a wok, but no cups or glasses!

Now go to your favourite place and have a picnic lunch together. If you don't have the weather, spread out a blanket on the floor and have an indoor picnic!

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Your kids will think it's the most fun!

Now here's the thing; when you've all enjoyed eating together and making the sandwiches together, explain to the children how simple your meal was. There was no lobster, no steak, no caviar, no silver plates or chandeliers. You were able to enjoy yourselves with what little you had.

Talk to your children about how we should be grateful for what we have and make the very best of it, and not waste our time complaining about what we don't have. This attitude of gratitude is at the core of any successful and effective relationship with God.

Ask the children what they most enjoyed about the meal. Try to leave them with the sense that their enjoyment had nothing to do with how much 'stuff' they had.

Continuing the theme of encouraging your children to pray, share with your kids that approaching God with a grateful heart will bring us much closer to him than going to him always grumbling and complaining. We should make a habit of looking for the good in our circumstances, and thanking God for that.

Encouraging kids to pray craft activity

How to encourage young children to pray.

This is a real favourite of mine, something very close to my heart. We believe that celebrating God should be a natural and joyful part of everyday life for your child, and integrating their relationship with familiar activities is a great way to enhance that notion.

So today we're going to follow the Arty Crafty Time slot from the show, and learn how to make the perfect paper plane, or rather prayer-o-plane! And the most satisfying thing about this is that it's a really good flyer, and very easy to make, so you'll have great fun with your child after taking the opportunity to share with them about different ways of praying to God.

How to make a prayer tree

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How to make a prayer tree.

Happy half-term holidays! A time of business and mayhem with the kids under your feet, always wanting the next exciting thing!

Well don't you worry, all of our activities are designed to be inexpensive and easy. Perfect accessible fun for you and yours.

Continuing the theme of enabling your children to take ownership of their prayer lives, we're going to make some prayer trees today! I'm sure this is a variation on a theme you'll be familiar with.

Using the templates below draw out two tree shapes on stiff card. The size we've used is A5.


Notice the key difference between the two shapes is that one has a slot cut from the top halfway down, the other has a slot cut from the bottom halfway up. This way, the two pieces can slide into each other making the cross shape you can see Stripy Monkey posing next to in the picture, and it will stand up.

Using the leaf shape provided you will have just the right size and shape to fold in half and hang over the slots in the branches.

The more foliage you add, the more interesting the tree will look.

The purpose of this is quite simple, and really fab. It's difficult to pray right? Especially as a kid. And how many tiny tots are going to keep a successful prayer diary?

So all you need to encourage them to do is to think of ONE thing to pray about each day. When you have prayed, write the subject of the prayer on the leaf and add it to the tree. After a few days, you'll have a prayer tree full of ideas for your children to refer to, to help them confidently pray in a way they have full ownership of.

If you're feeling artistic, you could modify this so the tree was covered in leaves and fruit. Or even monkeys and birds!

We'd love to see pictures of your prayer trees, do send them in to share!

How do I teach my kids to pray

A merry Thursday to you all!

And a poignant activity for you and yours today folks! Does a day go by when we are not faced by some new horror or tragedy in the news? Barely.

Christians have a responsibility to pray, we are entrusted with an understanding of the power of prayer and the duty to use it. Contrary to what the world tells us, we know that prayer has the power to change lives and circumstances. Most Christians will testify to the power of prayer in evidence in there own lives, so let us ensure we pass down this beautiful and awesome heritage to our children.

Of course, learning to pray is a challenge your children will face again and again as their understanding and relationship with God grows and changes.

How many parents and leaders out there have an experience of praying with our children which goes something like 'Thank you for my mummy and daddy, thank you for my house, thank you for grandma, thank you for my bed, thank you for my light and my walls, thank you for my rug and thank you for my cup...' and we notice the children's eyes drifting around the room, naming the items they rest upon in succession? Most I think!

Well, what a wonderful way to pray! I got to thinking about that and thought, 'That's not wrong, that's perfect! What a great foundation for prayer.'

In future, we'll look at some more ways of making prayer enjoyable and relevant to your children. But for today, why don't we just concentrate on saying 'Thank You'? Here's a little song I made with the Creation Crew kids which is about just that.
Why not get up and follow the actions? Enjoy!

How to encourage kids to read the Bible

How to encourage kids to read the Bible.

Now then, if your kids are anything like the majority of children we know, then in a world of Pokemon and video games, picking up the Bible and reading it is not always at the top of the agenda!

A great way to encourage Bible time is to nurture a sense of personal 'ownership" to help the children understand that their relationship with God's word belongs to them, it's their own special time.

So let's make and decorate some bookmarks today, to help make their Bibles feel like their own!

These are going to be special bookmarks, they will have spaces for your kids to fill in, documenting what they've read. 

When the bookmark is full, your child gets to choose the day's activity! For example, when your child fills up a bookmark they can choose from visiting the park, making cupcakes or painting.

Giving kids the power to choose is really encouraging for them, it works really well. You don't have to offer amazing treats, just things you might normally do anyway, but the reward is the opportunity to choose!

Don't force them to read a large amount, a few verses is fine, we want them to feel happy and pleased to be reading the Word, not like they are doing a chore!

Make the note area as a separate piece, so that when it's full you can just stick another over the top. If you are really canny and want to make that area pretty, scan the first one blank so you can print them when you need them!

Paint and decorate the rest of your Bible Bookmark however you feel inclined!

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TOP TIP: Don't put your bookmark in the Bible until you're sure the glue is 100% dry!

Send us some photos so we can share what you have made!

Gifts and Talents Christian kids guided discussion

We have a challenge for you today!

As parents and leaders surely one of the most tricky and most essential things we can do for our children is to encourage them to exercise and develop their gifts and talents.

And yet so often it can be something we've neglected in our own lives. As Christians, much of the parenting we do should involve breaking chains of negative behaviours and institutions we've inherited from our own parents/education/leaders, which takes a concious and concerted effort, and an awareness of our own shortcomings.

So let's break some chains today, let's invite Jesus into the situation and encourage our children to explore who they are and who they want to be in a way we may not have experienced ourselves.

And for those of us who blossomed under the care of wise and loving parents, let's pass that down the line today!

Before we can offer encouragement to our children in their area of gifting though we need to overcome the hardest part, which is to wisely discern what that gifting is, and here's a good way to make a start: the gifts and talents that God blesses us with will be fed by a heart of love. 

This is how we can recognise God-given talents: by what motivates them and brings them into the light.

To really pin that down simply and practically it means this: what does LOVE make your child want to do? What does LOVE motivate your child towards? And that's going to be the heart of your guided discussion today, which should lead you into any number of potential activities.

This is not the be-all-and-end-all of understanding your child of course,but a part of an interesting journey of opening them up to their potential. So the basic format of the discussion should be this:

SITUATION: Present a hypothetical situation to your child/children which may require some sort of intervention (a fire, somebody's hungry, a child is in danger, the library doesn't have enough books, children have nowhere to play)

RESPONSE: Discuss with them what measures might be taken to improve the situation.

YOUR ROLE: This is about looking into the heart of the child. Try to create situations that require some inventive creative thought, from rescue to fundraising, putting on a show to giving somebody help painting a bedroom, or picking flowers for somebody in hospital. Try to present scenarios for which there may be more than one way to help.

What you are looking for is to see what interests and lights up your child. A successful discussion might see the child quite disinterested for the most part, if everything sounds like a wonderful opportunity to them you may be missing the point!

The point of this exercise is to begin to see how love can motivate your child. A 'love' response is a powerful clue to a latent talent you and your child may not yet be keenly aware of, and which should be nurtured and tended carefully.

Christian kids Bible alphabet game

Instant, quick and easy Bible Fun!
Sometimes there's nothing better than simply being able to chat with kids about the word of God off the cuff, with no preparation, and no equipment or supplies required.

This is a fun little 'game', or perhaps more of a conversation starter, which can be whipped out at any time, in the park, out for a stroll, over dinner or in the car!

Starting with the letter 'a', work through the alphabet taking it in turns to name as many Biblical books/people/themes/places/ideas beginning with that letter. Move on to the next letter when you run out of ideas!

Simple and loads of fun, this is bound to get you chatting about Scripture in a light-hearted and enjoyable way.

Christian kids angel craft

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How about some little angels for your little angels?

Hebrews 1:14
"14 Are they (angles) not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?"

Matthew 18:10 states, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”

All you'll need for this quick and easy fun activity is two lollipop sticks, some plain paper, glue, scissors and felt pens or coloured pencils.

Draw out the shapes of the head and the wings on paper first, and colour them before cutting them out and sticking them on to the lollipop sticks. Glue the sticks together, at attach a loop of yellow paper to the head to act as a hanger!

Yellow works great for a halo effect!

Using the illustrations below as a guide, design your own beautiful angel to hang on your child's door, and discuss with them what these lovely and wonderfully enigmatic pieces of scripture could mean.

Take a photo of yours and send it in to us to share!

He is risen kids craft

While we're on the subject of tying things to pieces of string, you would have had to have been walking around with your eyes closed not to notice the immense popularity of bunting this last year or so, in the U.K. at least.

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It seems to be the must-have shabby chic retro home decoration right now. Well then, what about this for some trendy fun?

Make some bunting with paper and letters. Using a4 or a5 card, get the kids to draw out large letters, filling the card with each letter.

Use a catchy Christian phrase like 'He Is Risen', something warm and beautiful to put into your child's heart.

The top tip here is to paint and decorate the card letters before you cut them out, it will be much easier and less messy!

When all your letter are cut out, use a needle and thread to make a chain, threading in the front on one side of the letter, round the back and then through to the front again, as per the diagram.

This is a lovely, fun decorative craft your kids will really enjoy. Easy, simple and cheap of course! Obviously the longer or shorter time you wish the activity to take, the more or less elaborate you can make the decoration.

Post some examples of your work, we'd love to see!

Christian kids crafts Holy Spirit Dove activity

Happy Monday everybody!

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Here's a quick and easy craft we tried ourselves over the weekend. It'll only take a few minutes and the results are very pretty!

According to Christianity.about.com:

"The dove represents the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost in Christianity. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove when he was baptized in the Jordan River:
Luke 3:22
... and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." (NIV)

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The dove is also a symbol of peace. In Genesis 8 after the flood, a dove returned to Noah with an olive branch in its beak, revealing the end of God's judgement and the beginning of a new covenant with man."

Using the template provided simply cut out the nesting doves and the heart in the middle. Thread together with fine cotton for a lovely mobile. It doesn't look like much on paper, but is surprisingly attractive hanging in a window, and you get a lovely effect when you and two or three together in the sun!

Take some pictures and send them in so we can see what you've been doing!

Flower pressing Christian kids activity.

As a wise man once said, The spring is sprung, the grass is riz!

Where I am in the world there are pretty spring flowers bursting out of the ground and from the branches of the trees everywhere I look. Things may look different where you are in the world, but this fun activity can be done with leaves and plants as well as flowers.

Go out into your neighbourhood and collect the most attractive specimens you can, even a busy side-walk can harbour some surprising flora if you look hard enough!

Spend some time looking at a website such as:
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/Identification (UK)

Elsewhere in the world search online for 'Kids' plant identification' and you're bound to find a site for your regional plant life.

When you've identified some of your specimens, write a little tag for them and press them between the pages of a big heavy book. If the book is valuable to you, them fold several sheets of copier paper to work as extra pages and protect the book itself from staining caused by the plants.

Talk to your child about how we like to preserve and keep safe the things that are precious to us, and in the same way God wants to keep us safe and secure.

In the same way that we put precious flowers in our books, our names are written in the book of life, and will never be removed! Amen to that!

We are safe with God forever. Perhaps one day in uears to come your child will open that book, and see the flower, and remember how they are safe in god's hands.

How to teach kids to pray

Encouraging your children into prayer might be the most important life lesson you ever teach them.

It's worth ensuring that they always see it as a pleasure and a joy, and not a chore or a labour. Why not tie it in with a fun time making paper planes?

If you've watched our show you may have seen this already, talk to your kids about the essential life-skill that is making the perfect paper plane, and then share with them about how prayers can be approached in different ways as long as they are truthful and from the heart.

Follow the instructions on-screen, and join me in making some paper prayeroplanes!

Teaching kids to pray

Here's a lovely way of encouraging your kids to pray before bed!

Go down to your local flooring centre and ask them if they have any small carpet samples or off-cuts you can take away with you.  Choose something light, a pale off-white ideally.

Sit down together and sketch out a nice design before carefully transferring it to the carpet using permanent coloured markers.

Cut the carpet to a shape of your choice, and place it by your child's bed to kneel on while praying in the evening.

You just try and stop them using it.  Talk about empowering the child to take ownership of their faith!  Send in your designs, let's have a look!

Blind man's bluff game for kids with a Christian twist.

Blind Man’s Bluff.

Let's enjoy some very old fashioned fun today. This is one for a group of five or more really.

Before playing this classic game, explain to the children that if we don’t understand what’s good and what’s bad to look at, it’s like being blind!  We won’t know what we’re doing and we might end up very confused!

The rules are quite simple, select a child from the group to be ‘IT’ first, they then wear the blindfold. The blindfolded player must try to capture the others one by one.  The other children must get as close as possible to ‘IT’ without being grabbed.

As soon as one of the children is touched, they must stop and allow the blindfolded child to touch them and try and work out who they are.  If it’s too hard, clues can be given by the other players.

When ‘IT’ has guessed correctly, they sit out and let the captured player be blindfolded. The game continues until everyone is out!

*TOP TIP* If it’s too hard for the blindfolded player to catch anyone, have the other players whistle, to give a hint where they may be!