Pet Blessing Bags

We have a beach in the parish which is always full of dog walkers, so this Sunday we did 'Blessings on the Beach,' giving out printed blessings to humans but also dog blessing bags for the dogs! The blessing bag consisted of a dog treat and a prayer to bless the relationship between the dog and the human.  We blessed about 30 dogs and numerous humans. People really seemed to love it and animals were a great way into faith conversations! 

The prayer could easily be used for any pet, though, and it struck me that it might be a really meaningful activity for children to get involved in- either for their own pets or pets that they know in other homes.  After all, if God made all creatures and saw that they were good, then God must want good things for them!

Thank you God for everything you have created. Bless this pet and the relationship it shares with those who love it. May that love continue to grow. Amen.

You will need: Print outs of the prayer, small bags, dog treats, cat treats and/or treats suitable for other pets (see the selection in your local pet shop!)

Get children think of a pet they know and put a prayer and the relevant treat in a little gift bag. They may even want to write their own prayer of thanks/ blessing for that animal.

Take the bag home or to the pet's home, give the pet the treat and pray the prayer.

Straw Rocket Prayers

Here's a fun way to get children to engage in thanking God and asking for blessing while also symbolically releasing their prayers into his hands.

First, get children to write and draw their prayers on a small slip of paper (about the size of an average till receipt).

Next, roll the paper tightly round a straw (the long straight part rather than the bendy part!) and secure it with sellotape.  Fold the top of the paper over and secure it with some more sellotape.  The paper will now have made a sealed pocket around the top of the straw.

Talk to children about releasing prayers to God and trusting in His love and His power.  Say a short prayer, giving your prayers to God and then blow on the free end of the straw.  Watch the prayer rocket fly as you release your prayers!

Bless the Broken-Hearted Creative Prayer Station

With Valentines day approaching,I've seen a lot of crafts on Pinterest recently related to love and hearts.  For some reason, it made me think about those people who find this time of year difficult because they have lost someone or feel broken- hearted for some reason.  I came up with this prayer idea to help children to think of those who need to know God's love in a healing way.  It would also work well when looking at the beatitudes- especially 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted' (Matthew 5:4).  It could even be adapted for 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God' (Matthew 5:8)!

You will need: Sticky backed plastic (contact paper), a large roll of wallpaper backing or other paper, small cut up pieces of coloured paper.

 Cut out a big heart shape from a piece of backing paper.

 Cover the heart with sticky backed plastic (contact paper), sticky side down.

Turn the paper sticky side up.  Children can take a piece of coloured paper and stick it into the sticky heart, praying that God will bless people who are sad or broken- hearted.  If they know people in particular that they can pray for, then the children can draw them or write their name on the paper they stick into the heart.

God's love for us: Blessing craft

I found a really easy way to make origami hearts on Pinterest the other day (click here) and it struck me that, not only could older children make them easily, but we could also use them to think about God's love for us.

First of all, here's how to make the hearts.  You need a square of paper and I'm not good at writing instructions for origami, so hopefully the pictures will be enough!

 Fold into thirds

Turn over and fold the back piece down.

 Fold the edges in.

 Children could make these hearts and discuss loving our neighbours as ourselves, or talk about God's love for us.  To make an extra point about God's love for us, you can insert some handwritten blessing verses (I used Jeremiah 29:11 below) and children can either keep them for themselves or make and give them to others.

 Another idea is to use matchboxes as little blessing boxes.  Concertina up a Bible verse and stick the first section of it to the inside tray of a matchbox.  The verse can then be unfolded when the box is opened.

 Put the box together and stick an origami heart on the top as a reminder that we have the blessing because God loves us!

Seeing ourselves as God sees us: words of encouragement

A lot of children suffer from some degree of negative self image and one of the things we'd really like them to do is learn to see themselves as God sees them- loved and precious.

This is an activity we did both in our school lunchtime club and (with a bit more elaboration) at our church mid week club for 8-11s.  Once we'd established the rule that only 'good'  words could be used about ourselves and others this turned into quite a joyful and encouraging session, though one or two children struggled to begin with!

First we told the story of Gideon hiding in the winepress (click here for details of how to tell the story with a folding picture).  Out of the story we drew the idea that, even though we feel small, weak and useless sometimes, that's not how God sees us!  He sees how great we can be with His help!

Next we drew round our head and shoulders on A3 paper.  We sat silently for a short while and asked God to give us encouraging words about how He sees us.  We then wrote them into the shapes. After praying for encouraging words for each other, we then went round and wrote on everyone else's sheet the positive words that came into our heads.

To finish, with the midweek church group, we tried something new and asked God to give us pictures or words for someone else in the group (we've only really done this before for ourselves!).  I wrote each person's initial on a separate piece of paper and folded them all over so that no one could see who they had.  I then randomly redistributed the papers, we prayed for encouragement for our mystery person and wrote or drew what came to mind.  We had fun giving them back and sharing.  Only one person got themselves!  We had a rule that if nothing came into our head we could just write 'God bless you', but everyone came up with something to draw.

The children took their words and pictures and went away buzzing and positive and we, as leaders, really felt that something of God's love had been shared!

Welcoming new babies! Bag of little blessings for the new mum.

Just over a week ago one of our families had a new baby and there are two more due to church families over the next month.  It's a very exciting time! Here is a simple but fun gift we've put together for each new mum that will hopefully be useful for some situations...

• Kit Kats for when you need a break 
• Chocolate for when you need energy 
• Eye mask and ear plugs for when you need to catch up on sleep 
• Foot soak for when you need to unwind 
• Photo frame to hold some new memories 
• Bath toy and bubbles for when your baby needs some amusement
• Balloons to help you celebrate

Blessing our children

This week, as we talked about the good things that we have in our lives, it struck me how important it is to let the children know that God is watching over them and wants to bless them.

With the 5-11s we have spoken a lot about how God can speak to us in pictures or words or ideas he puts into our head when we pray and listen to Him.  We've also talked a bit about how, when reading the Bible, certain things might 'jump out' at us that help us in our lives.  

Recently we had a prayer tent at the Olympic torch celebration in Nottingham and one of the things we offered was folded up blessings from the Bible that people could just pick out of a bowl and be blessed by.  It was amazing how many people picked out a blessing that was directly relevant to what was happening in their life!

So I've made some blessings for the children in a similar way...

I took 6 verses from the Easy To Read version of the Bible and printed off some copies of each

These are the verses I used: 

• Jeremiah 29: 11- Good plans
• Isaiah 40:31- strength
• Isaiah 41:10- don't be afraid
• 1 Peter 5:7- give worries to God
• John 14:27- peace
• Psalm 46:1- help in trouble

I then cut the verses into strips, folded them and put them in a gift bag.  

We will use them in a guided session about blessing, but then the bag will be available on Sunday mornings during our prayer station time so that children can take a blessing when they want to.  We'll just trust God to help them pick the one that speaks most to them!

Jesus turns water into wine

As part of our summer Sunday sessions looking at meals Jesus had in the Bible, we looked at the story of Jesus turning water into wine.  Here's what we did...

Starting game: red and blue memory game

You will need a collection of cards, half of which are blue and half of which are red and all of which have the same colour backs.  I did this by sticking blue card to white card and red card to white card and then cutting them up.  Lay them out colour side down.  Children take it in turns to turn over 2 cards, hoping to make a matching colour pair.  This is great because we had 3 year olds and 11 year olds playing the same game with no problems!

Story

To tell the story we used a Foo Can (an illusion widely available- I got mine from Amazon).  I have a collection of illusions for various occasions and this one fitted the story really well!  Without giving away the secret it means that with, some prior preparation, you can pour clear water into a seemingly empty can and then pour out red water!  We then went on to discuss how this miracle was an example of Jesus giving good things to the people at the wedding and that led us to think about the good things we have in our lives.

Prayer

We thanked God for giving us good things, using this prayer activity.

Blessing others

Next we thought of people we knew who we'd like God to bless with good things.  We got some small card boxes.  A mini bag of sweets just about fits into one of them!  

The children decorated the boxes, wrote the name of the person they were going to give it to and put a bag of sweets inside.  Underneath we stuck a sticker that said 'Jesus gives us good things'.  They then took them away to give out to the person they had chosen.

God gives good things prayer activity

As part of our lesson on Jesus turning water into wine we looked at the idea of God wanting to give us good things.  We encouraged the children to think of good things in their lives they could say thank you to God for and then we got down to the prayer activity!

You will need:  A box, shredded paper, small treats such as lollipops and party bag filler toys (we had mini bouncy balls and mini spinners).

Children take it in turns to say 'Thank you God for...' or'Thank you God for giving me good things'.  They then  put their hand into the box and pull out a treat to symbolise God's gifts!

More easy ways to pray for others...

We've been trying some more practical ways to pray for others during our Sunday morning prayer station times.  These two ideas are easy to make, easy to do and are reusable!

Prayers for places- laminated maps and dry wipe pens.  

Children can write prayers for places on them or choose a place to pray for and underline, circle or put a smiley face next to the place name when they have finished

Prayers for people- laminated outlines and dry wipe pens

Children write names of people they'd like God to bless inside the outlines.  Simple!

The best thing about using laminated resources with dry wipe pens is that, after use, you can wipe off the pen (we use wet wipes for this) and reuse at a later date!

Prayer stations by children- praying for your family

The people sticks were quite popular when the children were making up their prayer stations.  Here is another way of using them...

Hold one of the wooden people in your hand and pray for someone in your family.  Ask God to help or bless them.

Blessing blocks

This is an easy way to get children to pray for others and will appeal to the kinaesthetic learners!  It's similar to the thank you tower idea we use with the 3-5s but involves naming those things and places we'd like God to bless.


All you need is Duplo blocks, thin labels and pens/ pencils.

Get the children to write names on labels, stick them on a block and build them into a tower. Each time they add a block to the tower they should ask God to bless that person or place.  Each visible side of the block can be labelled.  How many blessings can you build into your tower?

Blessings Jar

This is an idea for the whole family to get involved in!


Take a jam or coffee jar and decorate it (I used sparkly paper because I like that type of thing!)


Cut up some bits of paper and put them by the jar with some pens or pencils.  Put the jar somewhere accessible to everybody at any time e.g kitchen table.  When something good happens or someone has been kind to you, write it on a slip of paper and put it in the jar.


Make a routine of opening the jar once a day or once a week when everyone is together, reading the slips and saying thank you to God for His blessings!  Maybe you could even glue them all into a book to look back at in the future to see how God has blessed you!

Candle Prayers

Thanks to Tanya for these ideas!  This will be one of the activities inside our Prayer bag for under 5s.

Candle Prayers. 

Stick the birthday candles into something firm such as an orange.  Light the candles.  Give a blow.  Count how many candles are still burning.  Thank God for that many things!

Or

Light a candle for each person in your family.  Say their names and ask God to bless them.  Blow out the candles!

Paper people

Cut out individual paper people.  Children choose someone in their family or amongst their friends that they would like God to bless and then either write that person's name or draw their face onto a paper person.  These people can then be pegged to a line or blutacked to a board as the children ask God to bless them, simply saying 'God bless...', or praying quietly in their head if they prefer.  If the line or board is kept up, each time the children look at it, they can remember that person and say thank you to God for them. Over time, stories might emerge about how God has worked in that person's life!

When we tried this this week it worked well, but some children took delight in putting a pin through their person's head (as some are bound to do!!)  Blu tack is probably a better bet!