Archive for April, 2011

Parenting Resource Round-up

By Lindsey | April 30, 2011 | Parents | No comments

Here’s some great parenting articles and resources I found while surfing around the web this week.

Hope they are helpful to you!

Building Relationships

Three Things Your Children Need From You: post from Mark Merril’s blog
Screen Free Resources (did you miss the official “NO TV” week? No fear! You can celebrate anytime)
Be the Dad Today: Follow on facebook for daily tips on connecting with your kids
Get Kids to Listen without Yelling (free webinar)
Family Night Ideas

Keeping Your Kids Safe (mind and body)

Common Sense Media Reviews and Ratings: Is that appropriate for children? Find out here! This site reviews music, movies, books, TV shows, and more!
Parent Alert: Do your kids know how to handle pervs? Check out this first-hand account
The Difference Between Tattling and Telling: An important issue
Parenting the Online Generation: how much information is too much?

Taking a Break

If you and your spouse are looking for some time away to rekindle the flame, be sure to check out MomTrusted. They are a community connecting parents with child care and early education providers in their area. The service is free for parents to search for and hire care providers (no subscription fee, etc). Whether you need a Nanny, one-time sitter, or preschool, this site is worth taking a look at. You can chat online with other moms in the area (perhaps finding a stay-at-home mom friend!), check out reviews for local preschools and see ratings on sitters. Some providers show pictures of their facilities and even outline a daily schedule. There doesn’t seem to be too much up for the Erie area, but maybe in some of the larger cities you’d have better luck!

Decorating Ideas for Shake It Up VBS

By Lindsey | April 29, 2011 | Vacation Bible School | 4 Comments

It’s that time of year again! There are some great VBS programs on the market, as always. If you’re doing Shake It Up Cafe VBS from Cokesbury, check out some of these ideas for decorating:

Cokesbury Decorating Page suggests using kitchen items such as pots, pans, rolling pins, spatulas, cafe tables, and chalkboards with “Today’s Special” (the main Bible point) on them. You can hit dollar stores and garage sales for many of these things. Be sure to “like” Cokesbury on facebook for more decorating tips to come!
If your sanctuary has chairs that can move, you might want to position them to give them a restaurant feel. You could have four or five circled around an imaginary table or a real table with a checkered table cloth.
Cookbooks galore! Set up piles of cookbooks on the stage, on spare table, on the coat racks, and anywhere else they can be prominently seen, but aren’t in the way. You can usually score great deals on cookbooks at rummage sales or annual book sales. Check your local library. I know the one in Erie has a cookbook sale in May and you can usually get some pretty good deals. Or ask about getting the leftover books after the sale is over for a discount!
Be sure to have some chefs in authentic hats walking around.
It looks like many of the days focus on a festival, so you might want to go with a party approach. Helium balloons always brighten up a room and can last several days if no one touches them. You can score some decorative pennants (100 feet for $7.99) at Oriental Trading to jazz the room up.
Speaking of Oriental Trading, there are lots of other items worth taking a look at including:

Child’s Colorful Aprons

Children’s Aprons ($15/dozen)

Waist Aprons

Waist Apron ($15/dozen)

Chef Hats

Chef’s Hats ($6/dozen)

Be sure to take a look at some of the other party sites and search for keywords such as “kitchen”, “cafe”, “chef” and “cooking”. Some that I’ve used include Party Cheap, Discount School Supply (this is great for your craft stuff), and Shindigz. Whatever site you visit, be sure to stop by Retail Me Not for discount codes (free shipping anyone?)
Set up some cakes and cupcakes for display. If you don’t want the real thing laying around, you can go for fake food or make your own with paper towel rolls (cupcakes), hat boxes (cakes), or other boxes (cakes). If you want to go elaborate, get different sizes of boxes (save them from ordering your supplies online!) and make a fancy wedding-like cake for display. Check out some cool playdough cupcakes here. Here’s a cake box template if you want to make individual pieces. You could try to replicate something like this with a shoe box for display:

Google images or check Flickr for pictures of cafes or restaurants. See if anything inspires you. Awnings would be fun, but a bit much perhaps.
Check out videos from test churches and try asking other churches what they did for decorating. Better yet, find someone in your area that is also doing Shake it up and pool resources!
Remember, it’s not the decorations that count. Sure it’s fun to add some touches here and there, but it’s the activities, learning, and relationships that will really stick with the kids. Add some fun restaurant like signs, scour some sales for some little extras and then get concentrating on the important stuff: learning about God!

If you’ve got a great decorating idea, be sure to share it below in the comments!

Scripture to Grow On: Book Review

By Lindsey | April 28, 2011 | Bible Study, Resources, Reviews, Spiritual Milestones | No comments

We’ve been doing a great series in our weekly kids’ club called “How Use My Bible” from Discipleland. The series introduced kids to some “Cool Bible Tools” such as different Bible translations, Atlases, Concordances, and Bible Dictionaries. Along the way, we found some great Bible Tools aimed just at kids and some helpful books for families.

One of these great resources was a book from Discipleship Publications International called “Scriptures To Grow On“. Set up in index fashion, this book contains various topics and related Scriptures. Each main category is broken down into even further into subtopics. For example, the section on Attitudes looks like this:

Good Attitudes

Contentment
Forgiveness
Generosity
Honesty

Sinful Attitudes

Deceit
Envy and Jealousy
Hard-heartedness
Pride
Selfishness

There’s 12 different categories including behavior, the body, emotions, the mind, relationships, self-concept, sexuality, and speech. In each subtopic, there’s anywhere from two to twelve corresponding verses. I like the verses are written out in their entirety (in NIV).

The Five-Minute Breakfast Study

I especially like the suggestions for how to use the book in Family Faith Talks (found in the introduction). The Five-minute breakfast study suggests writing a verse out and putting it on the refrigerator (Monday), talking about real-life or Bible character examples (Tuesday, Wednesday), application (Thursday) and memorization (Friday).

Great Tool for Spiritual Development

Not only is this a Cool Bible Tool for kids learning how to use their Bibles, but it’s a great resource for parents who are looking for a hassle-free way to incorporate Scripture into their everyday lives. For about $12.00 you can pick up your own copy on Amazon or the DPI page ($12), and I would recommend you do so!

What about you? What other Cool Bible Tools have you run across in your ministry?

Make a Prayer Mural

By Lindsey | April 27, 2011 | Prayer, Spiritual Milestones | 2 Comments

Prayer Mural: A Hands-on Approach to Get Kids Engaged in Prayer

Recently I read, “Children tend to be egocentric in their prayers, but not selfish. Egocentric means their world is small. Their prayers are limited to pets, family, and friends. It is our job to enlarge their world and also mentor children how to pray. Without this coaching, the prayers of children remain the typical bedtime prayers that never change until eventually, the desire itself to pray is lost” (Hohman, Kids Making a Difference).

How do we expand the prayer list of the children in our ministries? By putting ideas in their hands, literally. One way to do this is through prayer cards. Another way is with a prayer mural. Here’s how to create one:

Encourage parents and congregation members to save their magazines and newspapers for about a month.
Browse through magazines as a small group, discussing things the pictures might represent. Missions magazines might be especially helpful for this (you can get a free subscription to Alliance Life here).
Additionally, you might want to draft up a list of prayer ideas such as military personal, national leaders, healthy food for kids, quality time for families, safety for missionaries, housing for the homeless, etc and have kids find matching pictures in magazines.
Look over the headlines in the newspaper and cut out ones the kids can pray about.
Take some pictures of the leaders in your church, such as the pastor, children’s ministry director, music director, etc and add it to the collection.
When you have enough pictures gathered up, glue them to a giant sheet of butcher or mural paper. Make sure to label each picture with an appropriate prayer request.
During prayer time, have kids walk along the prayer mural, touching each picture and praying for the request that accompanies it. Kids can take turns praying, pray silently, or whatever is appropriate for your group.
As the weeks progress, you can add more prayer requests to the mural or add praises to it as well. If your church has a congregational prayer request list (for weekly prayer meeting), be sure to add some of those requests as well.
If your mural is looking a little sparse, browse through Scripture for ideas. Some key passages might include Matthew 6, James 1:5, Philippians 4:6 or whatever you are currently studying in your ministry.

Above all, keep practicing prayer, no matter what method you use. The more you practice, the more it will become a habit for both the kids and the volunteers in your ministry. What method have you found especially effective in engaging kids in prayer?

Build a Better Blog: Ask a Question

By Lindsey | April 26, 2011 | 31DBBB, Resources | No comments

After taking a break last week for TV-Free Activity ideas, we’re back with the Blogger Challenge! This week’s task (#25) is to ask a question. There are many reasons to ask a question in your post. Here are four big ones:

It gives readers a sense of community and participation—there’s nothing like coming to a blog where readers are interacting; it gives the blog a sense of being alive.
It increases Blog Stickiness—people are more likely to return to a blog if they’ve contributed.
Reader answers can fuel future post ideas for your blog.
Well-worded questions can often rank high in search engines. Pick a question that people will ask when they search the Web for answers and optimize your page for that question, and you could rank quite well.

Seems simple enough. Be on the look-out for a question post here in the next week or two. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know if you’ve got a question on your blog so I can answer it!

Update: Check out the great response Joey got on his Question Post: How Do We Know God is Real?

Monday Minute to Win It: Kids Try This At Home

By Lindsey | April 25, 2011 | Games, Minute to Win It | 1 Comment

On this episode (Season 2, Episode 22), a number of contestants compete for the big money! Check out these games for your family time fun or children’s ministry!

Spare Me

Contestant must drop a marble down a pool noodle, sending it rolling across the floor and knocking down 10 upright markers (which are 16 feet away). Even though this was a level one game, both contestants seemed to have a really hard time with it, losing all three lives right off the bat! Might want to move those markers closer for children’s ministry!

Sticky Balls

In this challenge, the contestant must roll marbles across a flat surface in an attempt to get them to stick to double sided tape at the end of the table. Too slow, the marble won’t make it. Too fast, the marble will fall off the table. This would be especially good for older kids or youth.

Face the Cookie

This is a classic Minute to Win It game we haven’t seen in awhile. Both contestants have a cookie that they need to move from the forehead to the mouth using only their facial muscles. They slammed this one out, and quick! Of course, kids should love this one since it involves Oreos!

Puddle Jumper

Check out the video below for instructions. This looks like a fun game for kids, as long as they don’t get any crazy ideas with the cups of water!

Egg Roll

Using a pizza box, the contestant must fan three eggs from a starting line to a red box across the playing arena. Click on the game title for a youtube instruction video.

That’s it for now!

Have fun playing!