Showing posts with label Daniel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

How to Showcase Your Children's Ministry


Sunday School 2016 by Julia from Joan Eppehimer on Vimeo.

We made this video last year to show in church as a way to keep the children's ministry before the congregation. As many of you know, you never know how many children you will have on any given Sunday. This was a great way to let people see the whole picture.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Writing on the Wall, Part 2



Here are the directions for making a few more of the props I used when we did the Bible lesson from Daniel 5 about the writing on the wall.



Golden goblets:

  • I bought dollar store plastic wine glasses. I also found these gold star plates there.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Picture This!



They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I also think pictures make good spring boards for creative ideas.  I tend to believe in the theory of insight learning, where you get that “aha” moment

Friday, January 23, 2015

In the Lions' Den with Daniel



One of the major VBS curriculums for 2015 is using stories from the book of Daniel, so I thought that I better get the rest of my Daniel posts on here. 



We had a puppet stage that morphed from being the fiery furnace into the lions’ den. The cardboard lion in front of the den was an old VBS prop. It was just made from a picture of a lion in a coloring book projected onto cardboard and painted. 

The paper was leftover from some scenery used elsewhere. We kept the paper on after we finished Daniel and made this into a tomb for Easter.

Hint – ever noticed how cardboard warps if you paint it? Did you know that if you paint the back side of your cardboard it will “unwarp” it? The cardboard shrinks when the paint dries – painting both sides counteracts the shrinkage and you will get a straight piece of cardboard again. You only need a light coat on the back side. (We did not paint the back side of our lion and you can see that it is a little warped.)



We used this puppet stage to make the lions’ den, and then we presented a puppet show. Leo and Lawrence, two twin lions, told the story to us of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.  Here is the script if you

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Writing on the Wall Magic Window


Here is a cool craft we made for the story of the writing on the wall in Daniel. The drawing of King Belshazzar is by Jesus Rolon from his site, Crafting the Word of God. I revised his drawing in order to make it into a magic window craft. You can find the original picture here.

Magic window crafts have been around for a long time. They are a great way to illustrate any story with change in it. I first saw them used years ago as a VBS craft to illustrate regeneration through faith in Jesus. The picture changed from black and white to full color as you pulled it out of the frame. 

The secret is that there is a second picture hidden behind the back of the frame. The top picture is printed on a transparency. When you pull the picture out to the right, the “hidden” picture behind the frame is exposed under the transparency, revealing something new or changed. In this case, the writing on the wall.

Angela Howard at Bible Class Creations has an excellent video on how to make magic windows. I got my inspiration for this window from her instructions. Here is her written tutorial.






In this craft, when the picture of King Belshazzar is pulled out of the frame, a hand and the writing on the wall appears.
For this craft you need:

Saturday, November 22, 2014

The Writing on the Wall, Part 1



As promised, here is the writing on the wall lesson I did from Daniel.

This  Bible story is one of my favorite ones to teach. My helpers enjoyed it as much as the kids did. We acted out the story, complete with snacks and drinks. I find it is always best to tell the story first, or look at the passage in the Bible , before acting it out. Hearing the story first gives the kids a base to understand what they are doing. Acting it out then becomes a way to bring home truths from it, and helps them to remember the truths better.

I made up a great power point complete with writing which appeared  on the wall. I used a “wipe” effect in Power Point animations. It is a little tricky to explain. I use Free Bible Images for my power points. They have power points for almost every story in the Bible. The writing on the wall is found here

You can do a lot of cool things to a Power Point slide with the animations features. It is worth your while exploring these if you use power point much. If I get permission to share the slides I have altered, I’ll do a blog on this someday.

So, after we watched the Bible story in Power Point, then we acted it out. I had a cool room set up - my “throne room” minus the thrones and plus a “banquet table.” I got everything at the Dollar Tree (plates, goblets, and purple tablecloths).




The kids came in for the “banquet,” and one of them was chosen to be “King.” We put a crown on his or her head and placed a royal robe on him or her. Then we served lemonade and a snack using plain goblets. We instructed the King to demand that the gold goblets be brought in. My helper really hammed this up and went running to fetch the tray of gold wine glasses. 

No sooner were the glasses passed out than  I gasped, screamed and pointed to the wall. I had rigged the purple curtains by taping fishing line to them so that they could be drawn back. When they were drawn, a hand that had written on the wall was revealed. Of course , no one was freaked out, but they all wanted a chance to be the king. So we re-enacted it over and over again. 


We took two weeks to do this as I had a great craft to go with it as well. We did a really cool "magic window" craft the second week. Check out my blog post with the instructions.

The "hand" doing the writing is a clear food service glove stuffed with fiber fill and then taped into the cutoff sleeve of a sweatshirt.You can fins instructions for making the golden goblets and the "hand" here.



Saturday, November 8, 2014

Fiery Furnace



As promised, here is the rest of the story on Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (or “into – bed-you-go”).

I wrote a drama for this story that uses at least 10 people. You can use 20 or more since you need a crowd for all of the scenes. You can also do it with less than 10 people if you allow some people to have double roles. We used our adult teachers along with the students.

Here is the link for the DRAMA.
Here is the link for the IMAGE I used to make the golden idol.

Scene One takes place in the throne room. I actually have created a throne room for other stories, but I did not think of doing it for this one. 

 



Pictured to the left is the throne room I could have used. To make this room, I hang plastic purple table clothes from rods I have installed in my classroom. I will post more detailed instructions next week. The thrones are actually folding lawn chairs (fit for a king and queen -ha! ha!)






In Scene Two, we find ourselves out in the field before the

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Repurposing in Children's Ministry



The Fiery furnace lends itself to drama. It is an easy story to bring to life with just a few simple props. I originally was going to make a refrigerator box into a fiery furnace. However, I found they were not as easy to get as I thought. 

Then our short term mission’s team asked if they could set up our puppet stage, which we NEVER use, so they could practice for their trip. They wanted to know if they could keep it up for the TWO whole months before their trip. 

So here I was with this space hogging stage in my Sunday School area and no place for the furnace that wasn’t materializing anyway. 


"What's a girl to do in a situation like this?" I said to myself.

Then it hit me –

Pirate Themed Trunk & Treat

Shiver me timbers and batton down the hatch, it's trunk and treat time and have we got a theme for you. Be sure to check the video out a...