Bible stories, crafts and creative ideas for toddler groups, children's ministry and families
This past week our Bible Story was all about Joseph, his special coat and how his brothers sold him to people travelling on camels to Egypt. The camels were donated to the group about a year ago and normally live in our ‘Vet’ box. They come in very useful for several stories.
Craft – Joseph and his coloured coat! There is a PDF –Â Joseph
Look out for the umbrella in one of the children’s pictures 🙂
In the Bible Alphabet at Toddler group we are on to ‘f’. I decided to go with field – the story that Jesus told about the man who found treasure buried in a field, sold all he had, bought the field and then owned the treasure. You can find the story in Matthew 13:44.
To tell the story – I had a small treasure chest hidden under a green cloth and a spade. I went digging in someone’s field (it is important to mention that it belonged to someone else)Â and found the treasure – was anyone looking? No! So I hid the treasure and went and got all my stuff to sell. For this I had a bag of my stuff – a picture of a house, a toy car, my phone, a laptop, chocolate biscuits, a shirt – all sorts of things – to show that everything was sold. Then I went back and bought the field and dug up the treasure which now belonged to me.
Main teaching – knowing God is more important than anything else.
Note – the story is a parable so I felt quite happy to add a few anachronisms.
Simple craft – A4 brown sugar paper folded in half. From the folded join draw a treasure chest shape and cut so you have a treasure chest that opens on the join. Write ‘Can you find the treasure? on the outside. Children glue ‘treasure’ inside. Make sure they are left to dry open or they will stick closed.
I used some small glittery shapes that could be sprinkled over the wet glue. Very effective, lots of fun and messy!
At toddler group we’ve been learning about our amazing bodies during story time. This week it’s the turn of our mouths. We think about two things in the story, songs and craft – we use our mouths to speak and we use them to eat. Our focus is, ‘I am wonderfully made’.
In the story time we are using a Bible verse, ‘I am ..wonderfully made.’ Psalm 139:14. (We left out the word fearfully just because the children are so young.) This week we are thinking about our mouths – how we use our mouths to talk to each other. We can SHOUT and whisper. We talk about eating with our mouths too – thus the craft.
In our song time we’ll sing, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ very quietly, ‘Row, row, row your boat – with a scream for the crocodile, ‘Horsey, horsey don’t you stop’ with the clip, clop sound effects and ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’.
This is the craft to go with the theme. The children at toddler group are 3 years old and under and their parent/carer usually sits with them at the craft table – this is an opportunity for lots of chat about the different food.
To do this all you need are – paper plates, pictures of food either from magazines or from the web printed and cut out and glue sticks. Choose food that is familiar and a mixture of fruit and veg and the less healthy but yummy – in this case a cup cake. I avoided meat as I know we have children who wouldn’t be allowed certain meats.
Note – don’t put everything out on the craft table at once or some children won’t have anything left to use. Have a pencil handy so parents/carers can write the child’s name on their plate but don’t leave this on the table. I did a few weeks ago and one child had a lot of fun drawing lines on all the paper!
You could do this with older children. Use smaller pictures all on one page and get them to do the cutting out. They can select what they would like for their plate.
Enjoy!
