Children’s Storytime, September 4, 2011
Last Sunday was the final Summer Sunday, in which we had no Sunday School. This week was back to normal schedule. Life intervened with getting this posted; honestly, there were more fun and exciting things to do! Anyway… Last Sunday I chose to read two stories about Hudson Taylor instead of just one. I am not sure that was the wisest choice, it just might have been too much! Oh well, water over the dam. My arsenal included: the Bible, Hero Tales and the Ipad. I started out by asking them the question “Are you ever afraid of anything?” Of course that is a rather rhetorical question but it led into introducing the thought that God is aware that fear is something we experience and he gives us help to overcome it. I read Psalms 57:1 for them, since...
Storytime, August 28, 2011
Today felt like a failure to me. In the storytime department that is. All I can say is, Notes! Notes! Notes! Make some for goodness sakes! A week and a half ago, on a Tuesday evening, I had [mostly] planned out the following Sunday’s storytime, before I put two and two together that I was not even going to be at church that Sunday due to our somewhat short notice visit to Connecticut. I did not write any of my ideas down, instead relying on my fickle memory (I sure hope this doesn’t get any worse as the years progress!) and happily lived last week with the thought that I had this Sunday all planned. Oh dear, yes I remembered the hazy outline of the story I wanted to tell but that was it. I could not recall the flow of what I had been thinking, could...
Storytime! August 7, 2011
Prayer The point for this morning was to encourage the children to develop the habit of praying. Scripture used was: Luke 18:1 and James 5:16 b From Luke, I pointed out that Jesus knew it would be difficult for us to pray without giving up so he gave us a little parable to encourage us. In James, since I use the NKJV, I tried to explain the word ‘avail’ and then we talked a bit about what a righteous man is, what does the word righteous mean. For them I summarized it as “one who always seeks to do the right thing” and of course they know and agree that that is hard to do, but important. It is a good assurance to get into our heads that the effective and fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. It is encouraging to know. I...
Story Time, June 5 2011
Retro post #3 I decided (at Al’s encouragement) to have a morning where we act out a bible story while I am reading it. Usually here at home when we do this kind of thing, we laugh a lot, have false starts and many promptings. But in a church service I felt it should be slightly more organized, so the night before, I contacted some parents about having their sons participate with a heads up about who their character is going to be and the knowledge that they simply need to do (act out) what I am reading with whatever vigor they want to put into it. Of course there was a little room for some on stage volunteer parts (townspeople, extra lepers) but for anyone who had a ‘major’ role, they knew a little what to expect. For introduction, I brought the...
Children’s Church, June 19 2011
Retro post #4 Some time ago, I led a story time using the Pineapple Story book. So much time has elapsed since this Sunday, Summer intruded I think! that my memory has gotten hazy of that morning. But here was the gist. Prep beforehand included, buying two pineapples. Keeping one whole and cutting the other up into small chunks. In a large basket (to conceal the goods) place: 1. the book. Most important unless you plan to recite the story from memory 2. the whole pineapple 3. the chunks (in a container of course) 4. napkins 5. toothpicks To introduce the story I pulled out the whole pineapple and we talked a bit what it was and how it grows. If you have lots of time, kids love to hold/pass around something like that and get them to describe the feel,...
Children’s Storytime
Note to self: “Self, never again put off planning for children’s church until late Saturday night” This past week I had too many irons in the fire and felt like I could not fulfill all my obligations, hence it was not until Saturday evening at 10pm that I found myself sufficiently free and disposed to focusing on preparing for church and by that time, my eyes were beginning to be very heavy. Maybe it was a good learning experience for me though, in that I felt so fragmented and ill prepared that I asked my husband to pray for me prior to going into the church building and I think that made all the difference for how well the morning went overall, in spite of the fact that I was battling a strong case of nerves, could not think at all what to say...