"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." -- Jesus
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SSTN # 60 - August 7, 2006
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IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SSTN e-NEWSLETTER:
1) Veggie Tales Costume? 2) Fall Newsletter? 3) Explaining the Church 4) Keeping senior highers interested 5) Explaining the Church
Fall Sessions...Ready, Set, Go!
6) More Lessons 7) Lessons for 2 year olds 8) The amazing shrinking sunday school 9) Explaining the Church 10) More Lessons
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1) Veggie Tales Costume?
Hi , We are planning a Veggie tales opening to Sunday School in the fall and I wondered if anyone has any suggestions for making some adult size Bob and Larry costumes?
Thanks, Mary in Saskatchewan
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2) Fall Newsletter?
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any fun idea's or theme's for a Fall Newsletter.
Thanks so much, Lee-Anne
--from SSTN: any of the crafts, games or other ideas in the site can be used, so long as you include copyright and website information next to the activity:
http://www.SundaySchoolNetwork.com
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3) Explaining the Church
The church is a body made of many parts. If we were all one, an eye, then we would not operate. 2Cor 12.. The pastor is a part, a more visible part and so is the janitor that no one sees. If we did not have these people using the gifts God gave them then we would not be complete. Have the kids try to do something with their eyes covered. Have them try to pick up something with their thumb and forefinger taped together. You get the picture.
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4) Keeping senior highers interested
I teach preschool/kindergarten kids at church, so I'm coming at this with experience not from teaching jr./sr. high kids, but from working with them.
Can you involve the young people in your ministry - in choir or orchestra or praise team, helping with the graphics if you use multi-media in your church, helping teach younger kids, being greeters and/or ushers, etc? If they help with younger kids, you'd want to have them only part-time, so they wouldn't always miss their Sunday School class, church, or youth group.
I have about 12 "big kids" (4th - 10th grade, at this point) who help me on a rotating basis with my class, which meets during the church service. Each year, I ask them to decide with their parents how often they can help me (most come every other week or one week a month), then I make a schedule. Since I have 25-35 kids, having the extra helpers is great for me. The little kids enjoy the interaction with the bigger kids. And the big kids are learning about how to teach a class, as I give them assignments for part of the class-time.
Having an important role in serving the church (whether up front in the choir or behind the scenes in the nursery) might help them stay involved, when they are doing something useful, and they'll get to know some of the adults, so when they become "grown-up" they may feel more welcome in the church.
As I said, this is based on my experience as being one of the "helped", rather than being a youth group leader or teacher, but I hope these are helpful suggestions!
Linda
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Fall Sessions...Ready, Set, Go!
Bible-4-Life Curriculum from SundaySchoolNetwork.com is a non-denominational publisher and is designed to systematically help your children learn about Bible-times and God's plan for their lives today, tomorrow and for all eternity!
You will find our products distributed to a wide variety of church congregations and denominations throughout the world.
Are you ready for Fall sessions? Get set and go to:
This concept is difficult to teach to older students. It isn't easily grasped by PreSchoolers but they will accept it if you tell them. One way is with a shoe box set up to be a church building. During story time , you tell them that this is a church building but we are really God's church in the world. Sing-song a activity is to say " I'm a part of God's church," "Brian is a part of God's church" have him grab onto you as you have each member join the chain. Keep moving along as you sing-song "we are all part of God's church." Have them shout out other people in God's church. Then as they sit down in their storygroup tell a story about a wonderful church family whose church burned down but they found out that they could be a church to the community without the building. Diane Plum dplum@hughes.net
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6) More Lessons
Check out www.gracelink.net for a fantastic curriculum for this age group (Primary). -Sharon
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7) Lessons for 2 year olds
I help with my pastors wife who teaches this age, and repetition is important, like Jesus heals, we sing a song and march around the room, have a picture of a sick person in bed with a nurse or Dr. or both, keeping things very simple but fun, tell how Jesus heals us like this too, and how He uses Dr's. nurses, Mommy's and daddy's, to take our temps, etc. then for craft we take boxes of tissues and put flowers, stickers, what ever you want so that they can give it to some one, family friends, as "helping hands for Jesus". There are so many things we do, from Jesus walking on water, bring a small container fill with water and have floating boats, and Jesus, they get the story and have lots of fun, what ever you do, remember their attention spans are short, so songs, (we also use a puppet) lesson, craft. God Bless RI
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8) The amazing shrinking sunday school
I am the elementary education chair in a church that is struggling. We need to strengthen the Sunday school, and recruit more children, but there are a lot of other issues in the church as well that seem to be slowing us down. My immediate issue is this year. We have a 3-5 grade class which has two students in it. The k-2 class will be much stronger this year. I'd like to combine them as much as we can, just for the energy that comes with greater numbers. The problem is that I don't want the older kids to feel like they're being sent off to a little kids' class. I think they're already a little sensitive about this. Any suggestions out there? Thanks for your input!
Beckie
--from SSTN: when possible, "teach up". In this situation have the younger kids move to the older kids' class. Beforehand tell the older kids they will be used as "junior leaders", then pair the older kids with younger ones. Make sure you look at past issues of SSTN for multiple aged teaching:
http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com/archives.html
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9) Explaining the Church
Hi, here's my lesson plan on we are the church for preschoolers. I did a seven week series on this topic, this was the opening lesson. Email if you have questions.smerguson@earthlink.net Blessings, Christy
Not Just a Steeple 1 Corinthians 12:27 “You are the body of Christ. Each of you is a part of it.”
Display Pictures: a store, a house, a church, group of people and soda can What do you see? Describe there are a few kinds of buildings and one picture of people, and a soda can Can anyone find the church picture? How do you know it’s a church? Can anyone find the Pepsi? How do you know it’s a Pepsi?
Let’s see what the bible calls the church. Read 1 Corinthians 12:27. In this part of the Bible the writer Paul describes the church as a human body. He says Jesus is the head of the body and each of us has a part of the body of Christ. That means the church is the people. God’s church is not a building. The building is nice, and needed to give us a place to worship and have KinderPraise, but if there was no building there would still be church. We could worship together at (child’s name’s house) or have KinderPraise in the park. Whenever you gather together with other Christians- other people who love Jesus, you all together make up the Church. I am the Church, You are the Church, We are the Church together.
Now this soda can does hold the soda, and it keeps it cool and it’s easy to take on a picnic, but what we really want this can for is for what is inside. It wouldn’t be very good to hold soda without some container. It’s the same with the Church building. It’s comfortable place to use when it’s hot outside or raining and we want it to look nice so people will come and hear about Jesus, but what we really want is the people inside the building. The real church is the people.
--from SSTN: excellent idea!
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10) More Lessons
Hi Tracee,
I ran into a similar problem with curriculum a couple of years ago. The curriculum we were using repeated the same stories all the time. To top that off, the curriculum jumped around a lot. Because of this, I started creating lesson plans that started with the creation story and went through the Bible in a chronological order. There is a wealth of information and stories to be gained this way. This sound like a lot of work and it is. However, it is well worth the time to create these lessons and to actually be able to build from one lesson to another. There are some wonderful web-sites and books that can be used to create these lessons. I would be happy to talk to you in more detail if you wish. Please e-mail me at scioart@yahoo.com.
Sincerely, Connie G.
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