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.

The Throne Room

This was a simple project. I had seen this really cool room on Debbie Jackson's blog for the story of Queen Esther. I fell in love with her backdrop. In fact, I coveted it! After diligently searching the internet I found it, only to learn that it was no longer available and  it would have been over $35 if it had been. Not very good for a blog about being frugal.

I kept feeling like there was another way to do this, but I could not envision it. So I did what I always do in these situations, I let it incubate in my mind. It never ceases to amaze me how God puts the answer together for me. I just see something or think of something that fits the bill. 

So for this project, it came to me – purple plastic tablecloths. The kind you get at the Dollar Tree. Then I needed a way to hang them up. I wanted them to hang like curtains, so I could have pleats in them to make them more royal looking. There may be a cheaper way to do this, but I bought 2 plain, long curtain rods and had someone hang them for me at the top of the wall I was using.

Then I bought 6 tablecloths (actually, I found a few somewhere in the church, so I only had to buy 3). 

I turned the top down and taped it all the way across to make a pocket to slide over the curtain rods.

  

I hung them from the rod and had my background for about $15 including rods and tablecloths.

The thrones presented another problem. We didn’t have any chairs with arms on them in the church. I could not think of what I had at home that I could transport. Then it hit me – folding lawn chairs. The old fashioned aluminum kind.

I had a long piece of goldenrod-colored cloth I cut in half to cover the “thrones” with. We also had some shiny gold cloth in our resource room. I just took a short rolling cupboard and covered it with some of the gold cloth to put the crown and scepter on. And voila! I had my throne room - fit for a king, or a queen in this case.

I reused the plastic curtains when we did the lesson on The Writing on the Wall from Daniel. See the instructions here. 

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

The Grapes of Canaan

When I saw a review game that used giant grapes made out of balloons I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to make a giant bunch of grapes to represent the ones the spies brought back from Canaan in Numbers 13?” Actually it was pretty cool, and it was not that difficult. And of course, it did not cost that much. The only thing I purchased was

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 –

KidFrugal

KidFrugal is a blog all about making ministry happen when there are no resources to make it happen. It is about doing it anyway, because with God nothing is impossible. It is about doing children’s ministry when you do not have enough workers, money, building space or even kids. It is about making children’s ministry happen in churches with limited resources because we have a God with unlimited resources. I hope to equip you with ideas we have used, and more importantly, to get you

Colorful DIY Felt Boards

When I redid my 1940s classroom, I stripped it down to the plain walls and one table. I took the

bulletin and chalk boards down and the shelves and brackets off the wall and got rid of the storage cupboard. Then I scoured Pinterest for ideas of how to create an enticing classroom in a small space.

Last week you saw the metal board organizer I found and made. I also saw these cool flannel boards on Pinterest that were placed low enough for kids to play with. The flannel boards came from one of my favorite blogs, Apartment Therapy which has great DIY ideas for small spaces.

The Pinterest project called for Homasote boards.  I had no idea what Homasote was. Neither did the guy at Home Depot or our other local chain, so I did what any sensible person would do, I googled it.

I learned that Homasote is a brand name for a wall board product. It turns out that Homasote, and its generic counterparts are great for DIY projects. This fiber board has some added benefits. It absorbs sound, it’s moisture resistant and it even provides thermal insulation. Wow! And I just wanted functional felt boards that looked good.

 

I decided to make my boards shorter and wider than the tall and narrow boards on the original

Pinterest post. I had the vision of having felt cutout pieces from Bible stories available for the kids to play with when they arrived early.

Creating Space in Small Places

For my first remodel challenge, I attacked one of the rooms used for a Sunday School class in our children's area. Since the rooms were built in the 1940’s, they are small. Very small.  I think kids just sat at tables back then and never moved, so you could cram a bunch of them into a small room.  To view the complete remodel of this room, click here.

One of the first issues I addressed was how to make the most out of my small space. First I removed the cupboard and shelves that were taking up space in the room.

Next I made one of the organizational pins I had seen on Pinterest.  It was a magnetic board with little metal boxes stuck to it to hold crayons, scissors, glue sticks and all the stuff that had been in my cupboard.

Don’t Be a Wallflower – Make a Wall-Tree Instead!

I love this tree because it is 3D AND you can make it from used paper.

 If you have brown or black paper that you have used for a bulletin board background or for anything else, it can be repurposed for this tree. Because the paper gets twisted it doesn’t matter if it is wrinkled or messed up a little. You can even upcycle the brown packing paper that some companies stuff their boxes with to make this tree.

Classroom Upgrade

Our children’s ministry is located in the 1940s wing of our church facility. Needless to say, it is old. It needed a big overhaul, but not everyone was ready for that. Since I WAS, I began with my own class room.

Before Picture: space hogging cabinet and bulletin board removed

The first thing I did was to strip the room down. There was a huge bulletin board and a chalk board. I wanted the walls free so I could do whatever I wanted. I also took down the bookshelves and wall brackets.

The bulletin and chalk boards were glued to the wall, so it was a big job to take them off. Then