3 Ways to Teach Children About the Trinity

Teaching your children the intricacies of the Trinity can be a daunting task, but by using a few simple tools, you can easily and effectively outline how God can be a three in one deity.  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Thanks Mary Ann for photo

When I was teaching Sunday School, I was always praying for simple and effective lessons to teach the children, who ranged from age 3-13 all in one class!  Each week there could be anywhere from 3-23 children, so preparation was key, and each week I wrote my own lessons. 

To begin with we discussed power points, and how not to get electrocuted but also how they related to the Trinity.

Australian power points at least have three holes, in which to plug your appliance.   Some appliances however only have two prongs, but these are smaller appliances, which don't draw as much current.  In order for us to be fully effective in the Kingdom of God, we need Jesus, God AND the Holy Spirit, Who we sometimes aren't taught about.  

When we unplug from God by not spending time with Him we can't run for very long on our own, and we are angry, selfish and horrid creatures to be around whether we are children or adults.  This is a simple illustration in our modern world of how we need to abide like branches on a vine.  We will stop working well and run out of battery when we are not plugged into God.

2ndly we used Robyn Small's Quilt Chat, to really talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, how He directs us, and what His role was in the Bible.   These quilt chats are great as adult Bible Studies, but also as illustrations for Sunday School.  I would often print out a picture of a quilt chat and get the children to cut and paste the pictures into relevant sections on a worksheet.

My messy pouring versus Stephen's neatness.

That's why he's the sheet metal fabricator not me.

3rdly we made chocolate from a simple recipe of 1 cup coconut oil, 1/2 cup honey and several tablespoons cocoa or cacao powder depending on what you have on hand, blended together quickly with a stick blender, and poured into moulds.   The time of year we did this was Mother's Day so this was a great activity, along with a gift for the mothers at the end of the service along with mother's day cards we made, with Lisa-Jo's gorgeous printables stuck on the front and a little prayer inside: 

I declare that (name of child) will become a mighty man/woman of God and will not miss their destiny. (Prayer from Katt Kerr's book Revealing Heaven)

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Titus 2 Tuesdays

What Identity Are You Feeding?

I've heard a lot lately about how powerful our words are.  We all know that in theory to some degree or another but how does it effect our parenting?

I was at my favourite mother's group this morning and two of the mother's were sharing how their primary school aged children were really struggling with some issues lately of lying and being difficult, and about how to change this.

One of them shared how God had revealed to her, she was stop talking about all the negative problems she saw and to ask God for a picture of how He saw her son and to speak the opposite and the positive over him.  To bless the child with that identity, because while ever we continually speak the negative, the more that child or person gets bound up in that identity, feeling that they can't change.

I recently attended two different prophetic seminars about walking in your true identity. At one, one of the ladies Patricia King was talking about speaking and decreeing over your life God's plan.   Sometimes we are likely to say 'Under the circumstances I'm doing well,' but shifting our view point to rising above the circumstances like an eagle soaring, because when we wait on the Lord, He not only renews our strength to help us have a better attitude and therefore not blurt out negativity all the time, but He enables us to rise up on wings like eagles to soar above our circumstances, and there fore to speak out over our circumstances His purposes and intentions.  

Did you know that to bless someone, it means to speak out God's purposes and intentions over their life?

The other seminar that I was attending last night, was one where South African Cathi Mole, was sharing about when her now grown daughter, was in her teens and she just didn't feel it was cool to be at church anymore.    Cathi had been praying, and speaking scripture over her, pleading Jesus' blood over her daughter and one day God told her to get out a notepad and pen and He would speak to her.    He gave her a vision of how He saw her daughter, and the plans He had for her future, and told Cathi to stop focusing on and praying against the negative and speak the positive and within two weeks she saw a huge turn around in her daughter's life.

Although my daughter is only 1, this has already challenged me how can I be speaking wonderful things into her life? 

Whenever we see Stephen's Aunty Robyn, who baby Erin loves, Robyn immediately cuddles her and starts speaking God's destiny over Erin, that she is a worshipper who loves to praise God and a dancer like her Mummy and that she will seek God with her whole heart and pray for the sick and be a daughter of great wisdom. 

It's challenging me that I need to speak that into her life as well, instead of just scolding her for her naughties, which is hard to do sometimes when we are with them all the time and just want a break and blurt out how annoying, frustrating or naughty they have been all day when asked.  

I have posted up before "God, I declare that my son/daughter will become a mighty woman/man of God and will not miss their destiny" which is a great thing to pray over them, but then lets not negate it with negativity later on. 

So what has God been teaching you about your words? 

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Why we Made Chocolate Cake in Sunday School

Have you ever made a cake without putting in all the ingredients?   Left one out perhaps or substituted for something else? 

I decided we should make a chocolate cake for Sunday School, which would not only double as morning tea (heaps more interesting than the biscuits I normally give them) but also be the focal point of our lesson.

I compared my recipe for the cake, to the book of Proverbs as a recipe book for our cake.

Long story short: if you leave ingredients out of your cake it will flop.  If you leave the wisdom of Proverbs out of your life, it too will flop. 

We started off with the chocolate cake and then moved onto a couple of other games, as I compared Proverbs to a road rule book. 

God has a plan for your life.  Each of your days is written in His book.  God's plan for our life called our destiny, which comes from the word, destination.  What is a destination?

There are more ways than one to a destination.   We all have a journey to go on with God.

What is a good path for me is very different to God's path for you.  Just like I go a different way home than you do, because our houses are in different places, His plan for my life is different to yours.
God has different plans for each of us, but there are some things that will help us, like road rules help us get home so that we don't crash into out cars on our way.  Proverbs is like a book of road rules that help us get home to Heaven, at the end of our lives.

Have you ever played a game where you have to roll the dice and try and get from the beginning to the end but there are booby traps and mud holes along the way?  Sometimes there are great treasure troves as well.  Life is a bit like playing snake and ladders.  Listening to God and loving people is like going up a ladder but being mean and ignoring God will cause us to slide down a snake. 


After sharing this with the children we then played snakes and ladders and also this game that I made at a Chrysalis weekend with my table mates.    

Linking up at Thriving Thursday

Sunday School Secrets: Incorporating Dance & Worship

Children and movement, the two just seem to go together, and sometimes, having one without the other seems darn impossible; like when at Sunday school you are trying desperately to get the class sitting still so that they can learn something.  Even then we have discovered that it works far more effectively to allow them to colour or in or make something while they listen and learn.  Occupy their hands and their brains seem to kick in. 

Certainly this is a concept that almost all children’s tv programs have discovered, with shows like the Wiggles, the Hooley Dooleys, and High 5 to name a few, all incorporating movement into their shows that the kids can sing and dance along with.  Perhaps this is why the Christian children’s playgroup, Mainly Music has been so successful.

So how can movement and dance be incorporated into a Sunday School setting to help kids learn and memorise and express themselves to God without it all turning chaotic?  Well to be honest, I have found that it turns chaotic when we don’t help them express themselves with music and song.  Even putting actions and music to a memory verse helps them to retain it far better than when we  have not.

Ways to help children move and dance could be to give them ribbons to use and to encourage them to make up their own movements or even to play follow the leader with them and to name the movements you create.     These could later be incorporated into a dance to present to the congregation.    

A secondary teaching opportunity that presents itself when using banners in the Sunday School setting is that of teaching what different colours mean.   There are many and varied ways to do this such as creating a memory game or a rainbow and writing colour meanings on the rainbow. 

We also just need to let our kids know that it is ok to get excited about God, a concept that may be hard enough to get our own heads around if we have not ever thought this way.  Certainly the Israelites in the Bible were excited about God as we have discovered over the past few articles, as we have dug around to discover the deeper meanings of the word praise in the Hebrew.  If you remember some of the meanings were to ‘shoot out our hands in praise, to rave, to shout and clamour about foolishly’ to name a few.  As adults perhaps we need to relearn what we have been taught traditionally so that our children can have a richer experience of worshipping God.

You might also like to read, 'Is it Ok to Let My Daughter Dance?'
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Sunday School Secrets: Heaven

Welcome to our first little bit of Sunday School Secrets, where we get to come together and share our ideas and inspirations for teaching our little and yet very important students some very foundational life lessons. 

I’m not sure about you, but I would rather sit down and come up with a lesson from scratch than follow a book. Actually, I’m not sure about that.  Perhaps I would like to follow a book but none of the books I’ve tried other than Eyes that See and Ears that Hear have really worked.  

My students don’t seem to be the type that want to sit still and write in a book and match words together or find them in word searches.  It all needs to be a bit more interactive than that. 

Recently I introduced the concept of a Sunday School Board, where we pin our lesson up and then carry it out and hang it up on the wall where everyone coming downstairs after the service can’t help but see it, and sometimes the kids even pull them over and do a ‘presentation’ and, I’m amazed actually recite the lesson nearly perfectly.  (If you are despairing that the children in your class aren’t learning anything, get them to give the adults a presentation, you’ll *hopefully* be amazed.) The children love arranging it on the board, pinning it on and then showing the adults.

So for the past two weeks we have done a lesson on heaven.  I’ve got the picture here of our board and I’ll just go through and explain what we did. 

First I cut out the letters H E A V E N at home and brought them in, and because we had mainly girls that day, they decorated them with glue and beads, while I read to them out of ‘Revealing Heaven II’ by Kat Kerr.

There are quite a few books about these days of children or adults who have either died and gone to heaven and come back to life, or been in a serious accident and had an experience of heaven whilst in a coma, or simply had dreams or visions about heaven.    So the pictures I used were illustrations out of the fore mentioned book that the author herself had drawn.  

When I was a youngster and asked questions about heaven I don’t remember getting many solid answers other than that I would go there when I die.   I wanted to inspire these kids with some stories of heaven and then use it as a platform to share the salvation message.

I specifically read to them about the baby nursery in heaven where aborted or miscarried babies go, about the mansions God is preparing for us and about our pets who have died.

Then I asked some questions.  Who can go to heaven, where is it, how do we get then and when? And in there I slipped the salvation message to these children. 

Where – somewhere in out of space God has prepared a place.  (Dad used to sing that to me). 

How- through Jesus who died on the cross for our sins, and Stephen explained this more in depth with this little illustration on the chalkboard. 

(In the beginning God created the earth and we were straight on our way to Heaven, but then sin came in and we fell and we were straight on our way to Hell, but then God sent Jesus to die on the cross and bridge the gap.  Now we have a choice to walk with Jesus or keep going on our own to hell)

When – either when we die, or sometimes God might choose to give us a dream or vision.

Who – Those who ask Jesus to be the boss of their hearts and say sorry for the bad stuff they’ve done. 

So what else is on our board? 

The bits hanging off the bottom are part of a Psalty song ‘Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace, I want to see my Saviour’s face because Heaven is a wonderful place’

A little prayer ‘I want to be heaven minded, like you God’.   This is actually a part of a Bethel song from their album ‘Be Lifted High’.  At one stage I was listening to this album every morning as part of my quiet time and particularly that song and I found that I was seeing things differently than before.

 

"I want to be heaven minded"

 

The next week we chatted about how we are three parts, body, soul and spirit, which was actually building on/reviewing a previous lesson.

Our body is our physical part, our soul is our mind, will and emotions and our spirit is the part of us that connects to God and goes up to heaven when we die where we get a new body.

We coloured in a couple of pictures that I just found on the internet, about Jesus being our strong tower, and how He is the door.

Oh and yes, both weeks we did touch briefly on hell and who goes there and why.  It’s a tricky one because I didn’t want to scare their little socks off because when I’ve read books about hell I’ve had nightmares for months, but I did want to make sure that they understood that heaven isn’t the only place people go after death. 

So what are your Sunday School Secrets?  Please link up below :)
 

 

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A Fishing Game to Teach Fruit of the Spirit

All right I admit, I just thought of another use/idea for this game as I typed up the title.   I really should be incorporating the whole ‘fishers of men’ theme into this game, maybe I will next week. 

Originally I made this game because we were learning about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Fruits of the Holy Spirit and just other good/bad words that are written in the Bible.  So what I did was cut out some fishys and write things like integrity, gossip, lies, truth, mercy, salvation, peace, love, joy, righteousness on them.  Most of the children can’t read well enough to work it out themselves when they catch the fish so they have to bring it over to the leader who tells them what is written on the fish and asks them whether that word is good or bad.  It is then a great opportunity to explain that word to them, which most of the time, stretches our own brain to come up with a good definition. 

There are a couple of ways to play this game, but we sort of make it up as we go.  To start with we were playing it that good fish go in one pile, bad fish in another, fruit of the spirit fish in another and gifts of the spirit in another, just to get them learning what they were.  After a couple of weeks they were really good at this and when we introduced this game upstairs in church during a ‘Sunday School Service’ the kids were winning over the adults hands down.

Another way is to get them to just catch them and count how many they have, or to grab the fish and if it’s good pray for it to come into the church, their family, their lives etc or if it’s bad, declare that they don’t want it.  After all the power of life and death is in the tongue and it’s never too early to start declaring stuff over or out of our lives.

So to make the fish, just draw a rough shape on cardboard and cut it out, then put a paper clip on it which will be attracted to the magnet glued on the end of your ribbon which is tied to your stick.   There you are simple,  the only other rule we normally have is that we make a pond out of some rope on our blue carpet and you can’t stand in it. 

The photos are of Raelee, my younger sister when she came to visit, catching some fish in our living room.  I brought the game home for her to play because she was sick on Sunday and didn’t come to church. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Sunday School Secrets: A Declaration For You

Welcome to Sunday School Secrets, a fortnightly link up where we can share our Sunday School ideas and revelations.
 

Sometimes we know all too well that 'The tongue has the power of life and death' Proverbs 18:21, and other times we forget.  So let's be intentional about using it for its full positive effect.  This declaration comes from 'Revealing Heaven II' by Kat Kerr, and the font I've used is from Vanessa.

We have been using this declaration in our Sunday School and teaching the children to bless each other by speaking it out using their friend's name, even the adults have gotten on board.

On Mother's day I gave out little cards with quotes from Lisa-Jo's Surprised by Motherhood on the front and inside cover, and with this quote and all the names of the kids I  our church around it.


 

An InLinkz Link-up

Destiny GPS

by Lizzy

In Sunday School last week we discussed our destiny, and I want to compare it to a GPS. Perhaps you will find these notes useful for your Sunday school or youth group, and these notes are going to pave the way for our bigger series on destiny, because really that’s why we want to get the most out of life. With all the choices and things we could fit into our day, we are trying to find out what is the most important, what we really want from life and where we really want to end up.

When life just seems to be a collection of facebook statuses and twitter tweets, that are all pointing in varied directions, sit back for a minute and write down your dreams and desires; because Goals Inspire Faith

What is a GPS? When you are in the car what does it show you? The quickest route or the longest route . What does the GPS do when you decide to go a different way than what it wants? Does it spend the whole time directing you back to the best route? God is our GPS, our God Positioning System. He has a best route for us, but sometimes we are stubborn and really want to go our own way.

There are more ways than one to a destination. We all have a journey to go on with God, and He knows the best route. What is a good path for me is very different to God’s path for you. Just like I go a different way home than you do, because our houses are in different places, God has different plans for each of us, but there are some things that will help us, like road rules help us get home so that we don’t crash into other cars. Proverbs is full of these road rules.

An example of our different journeys would be, if God wants me to be a writer and I decide to be a doctor and help everyone in Africa and chase after that, I will have a lack of peace and fulfilment because I’m not in God’s plan, but that might be His plan for you.

I have a friend who decided to go back to University, complete year 10 and study different languages so he could go to another country and translate the Bible. Wonderful plan, but he was becoming depressed and struggling badly with his studies until he discovered that though the concept was wonderful it wasn’t God’s plan and he switched to science studies. Have you ever played a board game where you have to roll the dice and try and get from the beginning to the end but there are booby traps and mud holes along the way? Sometimes there are great treasure troves as well. Life is a bit like playing snakes and ladders, but listening to God’s voice will help us avoid the snakes and find the ladders.

(Photo Credits to Shelly Neideck)