Incarnational Relay Race

"If an alien in a titanium spaceship landed in New York would that be a big deal? Jesus, entirely alien from anything we know, landed on earth in Bethlehem" over 2000 years ago, and he didn't even use a spaceship. We call this the incarnation, and according to Alan Root who penned that quote, there is no bigger miracle than God visiting our planet in an earth-suit (so far anyway!).

Pirating Children's Interests

In my former life, I used to work in the children’s room at a local public library. One of my jobs included being in charge of the story programs for school-age children. I often used ideas I would have used in a church program to transition into a book. Here is one of my favorite story time programs that I did: Dress Like a Pirate Day.

Of course everyone including me had to

Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

This is a very familiar story to those who grew up in the church, but if you have the privilege of teaching children who have never heard it before - it is dynamite.

I used a combination of flannel-graph and homemade action figures to teach the story.

The main point of this lesson is that Elijah is trying to bring the people to a decision - If the LORD be God, worship him, but if Baal be God, then worship him. They were wavering between two opinions and his job was to confront them with the truth and help them come to the right commitment. Their devotion was divided. God wants our undivided devotion.

Minions of Reasons to Make this Valentine

Mr. Mark, from Mr. Mark's classroom, made these cute minions from Twinkies. I loved the idea, but when I bought the Twinkies, I saw that Hostess has their name all over it. Sorry, Mr. Mark, but I had to dress this guy up more so he would really look miniony.

What you will need:

6 Ways You Can Use Canva in Minstry

KidFrugal exists to help equip and resource those in the small church children's ministry. This post is to introduce you to a great resource that is FREE. It's called Canva.

Canva helps you design beautiful graphics and it can make you look really good. They have tons of tutorials to help you get started. Once you learn your way around Canva, I think you will find it very useful. I first learned of Canva from a podcast called "Oh So Pinteresting" by Cynthia Sanchez. (You can find her blog and material under Tailwinds now.) Canva enables me to make my blog graphic the correct size for pinning. But it does a lot more...here are just 6 ways you can use it.

Thanks for Your Commit-"mint"

I saw this idea for appreciating workers on Pinterest and tweaked it a little. You can find the original posts here and here.

Basically you purchase different types of mints. York Peppermint Pattys, Mentos, Andes, Lifesaver mints, peppermint gum, hard peppermints and so on.

Feeding Elijah - Part 3

This was a fun themed review game for stories about how God fed Elijah during the three and one half years of no rain in Israel.  I like this review game for two reasons. First, it provides visual reinforcement of the story (God fed Elijah bread). Second, I like to have the kids do something active during a Bible lesson.

I put slices of bread in sandwich sized Ziploc bags and the kids tossed them into the hole if they answered a question right. Each kid had three tries.

I let the early arrival kids help make Elijah as a pre-session activity. They drew the face and hands (we actually let 2 of the kids trace their own hands). I had the board ready before class and then we just glued on the parts after the kids made them.

For part 1 of the Feeding Elijah lessons click here. For part 2 click here.

The idea for this game came from a Pinterest pin.