Candy Land Style Easter Egg Hunt with a Twist

A few years ago we did an Easter Egg hunt as part of our Sunday School Easter Breakfast. We have at least 1,000 plastic eggs, so in order to make it fair, I arranged it so each child would get 14 eggs. To do this, I made up a color coded card for each child. I did the colors much like the cards you pick up when you play Candy Land. So each child would pick up 14 eggs according to the colors on

The Empty Tomb - An Interactive Easter Lesson

Last Easter I wanted to make an empty tomb for the children to enter for our Easter lesson. I had already covered our puppet stage with stone paper for Daniel and the Lions’ Den. I simply converted it into the tomb.

How to make the cave:

1. First, I cut an opening in the front for the tomb entrance. I saved the paper I cut to cover the stone I made in step 2.
2.  I found a large piece of flat cardboard and covered it with the paper from the opening. I needed to add some extra paper to complete the job. This was the stone that was rolled away.
3. Finally, I covered the rest of the puppet theater with black tablecloths to make the cave effect. You could use plastic ones from the dollar store, black sheets, or even black bulletin board paper if you have it.

That was it. I added an old

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.

Helping Children Change Lives - One Shoebox at a Time

Since I just pinned a pin about the “store” we run for Operation Christmas Child and said you could check my blog about for more information, I thought I better put some information here. 

We have an ongoing “store” in our children’s Sunday School department. They earn money each week for coming, being on time, bringing visitors, learning the books of the Bible and bringing their Bibles (that last one never seems to work – and yes we do use Bibles in Sunday School). 

The FREE videos are not for OCC. We are just trying to get rid of them!

During most of the year, children can buy things for themselves or gifts to give to others. But starting

Riding the Camel

This fall my husband and I visited a nearby church when we were on vacation. I was amazed to see a full sized camel kneeling on their platform. Of course it wasn’t alive, but it was big enough for their 6 foot plus Pastor to actually sit on.

This church decorates their platform each quarter to correspond with the theme for their Wednesday night kid’s program. This fall the theme was Wilderness Escape. It chronicled the Israelite escape from Egypt and journey through the wilderness. They had the camel, an oasis, a pillar of fire and

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

Feeding Our Fears to the Lions

The idea for this Daniel activity came from the messy church blog. My talented coworker looked at their picture and then made this cool lion mailbox for me.

She found a relatively square corrugated box about 11” X 11” X 9”. She covered the front with tan

For the Love of Volunteers

I love Volunteer Appreciation. It is so enjoyable to make others feel appreciated. I have a whole Pinterest board of DIY ideas for appreciating your workers, but today, I want to blog about my Valentine one. 

This Valentine Appreciation Tree emerged from the Volunteer Christmas Tree I wrote about in an earlier blog.

For Valentine’s Day, I bought Little Debbie’s for all the workers. Who doesn’t love Little Debbie’s? I put each individually wrapped package in cellophane Valentine bags from the Dollar Tree and hung them on the lighted Christmas tree. My coworker made red hearts with her Cricut to turn it into

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

Do You Want to Have a Frozen Party?

Do you want to have a party?

Last year we did a children’s outreach over the March break for children who didn’t get to go to Disney, but stayed home for spring vacation. We chose to use the movie Frozen as a theme for the party. Here’s what we did:

Eating the Frog

I have been reading a great book lately on productivity. It’s called, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. The premise of the book is based on Mark Twain’s famous quotation, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Brian turns this into a powerful illustration to motivate productivity, only you have to eat