We have found that although there is a wealth of excellent material available for Sunday Schools much of it is difficult to adapt to a small Sunday School in an under-equipped Church Hall, needs more time to prepare than the average volunteer leader can offer or is expensive to buy, often all three. The ideas offered here are not complete courses in any sense, but are things we have done in our Sunday School that worked well.
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The Armour of God: Ephesians 6 vs 10-18. Over several weeks we talked about how each part of the Armour of God is important today. For our activities we made the armour. The most ambitious was the helmets which were papier mache moulded over balloons and painted silver. The breastplates, swords and shields were cut out of cardboard boxes and covered in aluminium foil, the belts were lengths of scrap material and we cut out dove shapes to wear on our shoes. The armour was named but all kept together and on the last week we wore it into the Church service singing "We are Marching". (Before we went into Church I told the children that any "knights" caught fighting in Church would be court marshalled and would not be allowed to keep their armour - they behaved perfectly in church but the churchyard saw quite a battle afterwards!
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Jesus the vine: John 15 vs 1-17. The children made coloured leaves by making hand prints with paint and cutting them out. Bunches of grapes were made using finger prints. The stems were lengths of crepe paper twisted into shape. The completed vine was used as a display with the words "Jesus said ' I am the true vine'".
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We were asked to do a wall display entitled "The future" for a flower festival so we gave each child six circles about 10cm in diameter. These were decorated as given below and then arranged into flowers.
Ideas could be written or drawn. These large flowers were arranged on our notice board and the gaps between them filled with tissue paper flowers.
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The wedding at Cana: John 2 vs 1-11. We tell the story getting the children to act it out as we go (selecting a bride and groom usually causes some fun!). For the feast we use small snacks provided by the leaders. There are two ways we have used to change water into wine. For the first way we use paper or plastic cups each of which has had a tiny drop of red food colouring added to it earlier, when lemonade is poured in it turns pink. The second method is probably simpler and more effective, although easier for the children to see how it is done, I start with an opaque jug with some blackcurrant squash concentrate in it then the children just see me fill it with water. In either case I always tell the children how it was done, they usually guess, and point out that when Jesus did it they were unprepared washing vessels and the wine was the best.
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Parachute Games and action songs |
