Sugar paper, glue, pictures cut from catalogues and magazines, felt, feathers, satin type fabric, wool, ribbon, stars, pictures of birds singing, pictures of musical instruments and paper plates. For ‘Things I like to smell’ spray the pictures with perfume beforehand. (If you can have some real items for the children to smell – lemons, herbs and sweetpeas are all good. For ‘Things I like to hear’ it would be great to have a table of musical instruments for the children to use.) I also used printed labels, ‘Things I like to… smell/taste/see/touch or hear’.
This craft is suitable for all ages – all you need is collage materials, facial features cut from magazines or pictures from the internet, glue, face shapes and sugar paper. Older children can cut out the facial features they want to use. You can either go for proper likenesses or make some funny crazy faces.
You could use this craft for Thank you God for my eyes, ears, mouth, nose. With toddlers there are lots of opportunities to talk about our faces as the craft is made.
Picasso made a lot of funny faces – you might want to print some of his pictures to show the children. Take a look at this Pinterest board.
Over the past term at our Toddler Group we have made a ‘thank you God book’ – this is an overview of what we did
Title page ‘our thank you God book’
Then the following pages – with pictures added from google images. Each page was A3 and was laminated.
‘I am wonderfully made’ Psalm 139 verse 14
Hands can .. clap, wave, touch, catch
Thank you God for my hands
Tabitha used her hands to help others
Feet can … run, jump, walk, tip toe
Thank you God for my feet
Zacchaeus used his feet to run to see Jesus
Noses can.. rub, smell, breathe
Thank you God for my nose
Mary gave the special perfume to Jesus. It smelt beautiful.
Mouths can … shout, eat and drink, sing, speak
Thank you God for my mouth
Ears can listen to … whispers, shouts, songs
Thank you God for my ears
The children shouted ‘Hosanna’. Everyone heard.
Eyes can.. blink, see colours, close, open
Thank you God for my eyes
Jesus died. Then he came alive again. Lots of people saw him.
For the first 6 weeks we went through the parts of the body – so we just did hands can .. thank you God for my hands etc. The children were able to do the different actions.
Then for the next 5 weeks we reviewed/repeated what we had done but added a short bible story. We combined ears and mouths for a week as they fitted so well with the story of palm sunday. The children were able to shout Hosanna and everyone could hear them!
The pictures are just to give you an idea of what we did – they were more of a visul aid for the adults as we had actions for the children to do. I find it really helpful to have something visual to refer to just in case i forget what I’m meant to say!
Children of almost any age can decorate these simple egg shapes. We used them at toddler group today, but they would be great for older children who would be able to do more intricate designs or pictures.
To make them you need to start with a salt dough. This is very easy. You need 2 cups plain flour, I cup of salt and I cup of water (add this gradually as you may not need it all). Kneed the dough on a floured surface and roll out to about 4mm thick. As you do this keep making sure it isn’t sticking to the work top. I used a template and cut around it. You could also use an egg shaped biscuit cutter. If you are making hanging decorations you need to make a hole for the thread about 1cm away from the edge. Then leave the shapes to dry. They will air dry, but it will take a long time (48 hours plus) or put them in a low oven, not more than 100C, for up to 4 hours. (they can burn so keep an eye on them). Once dry you can paint them or leave them plain for children to decorate.
We used felt tips to decorate but you could also glue coloured paper on to them and add glitter! A covering of PVA glue at the end will add a shine – but as you can see in the pictures the colours may run a bit.
I loved this craft and my children had a really good time using up the left over eggs.
Our Easter Story in toddler group focused on people seeing Jesus alive again. We reviewed what we had learnt about our eyes first and then the story was told about Jesus dying but coming back to life again.
At the end of the morning every child received a chocolate egg in a stripey bag. Yum!
Easter is nearly here! In toddler group we have been learning about being ‘Wonderfully made’ and have already talkied about our mouths that shout, whisper and taste’ and our ears that can ‘hear shouts and whispers’. The Bible story that we are using to develop this is the Palm Sunday story that we read in Luke 19:29-40, Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-10, John 12:12-15. In these accounts people shouted ‘Hosanna!’ and everyone heard. The story will be told simply and the children will be encouraged to shout ‘Hosanna’ in the appropiate places!
The above craft is palm leaf shapes for the children to decorate using chalk, felt tip and wax crayons. I prefer wax crayons rather than the plastic variety as they blend and make a better mark on the paper.
The word Hosanna means ‘Save please’ and also ‘Salvation has come.’ Take a look at what John Piper has to say about Hosanna!
There are Bible stories that tell us what happened just prior to Jesus’ death and ressurection. One of these stories tells us about mary annointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume.
As the children had been learning that we are ‘Wonderfully Made’ we started with the familiar – we thanked God for our noses and how they help us to smell (we did the flower craft for this). Then we moved from the familiar to something new – the story of mary and the expensive perfume she used to anoint Jesus. The story is found in John 12: 1-8 where we read that, ‘the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’ When you tell the story have a bottle of perfume to show.
The craft was very simple – a shelf and an assortment of perfumes bottles to stick onto it. You could spray these with perfume beforehand (before the children arrive). I have shown what the craft would be like using colour printing/photocopying and black and white. I did go around the outlines of the bottles with marker pen so they stand out more and I cut them out in a bubble – but they need a flat bottom to sit on the shelf!!
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