Jar of perfume craft – mary anoints Jesus

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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Zacchaeus craft

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A few weeks ago in toddler group we learnt about our feet. To build on that we have done a Bible story that includes feet – in Luke 19 we read that a man called Zacchaeus ‘wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him.’ (Luke 19:3,4). In the story time we looked again at our feet being wonderfully made and then continued with the story of Zacchaeus. With very young children it may be enough to just teach that Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus and how he managed to do that. Children can run on the spot and pretend to climb a tree as you tell the story. With school age children you could tell the whole story.

For the craft we had a tree outline and leaves cut from different types of paper and material – which gives the picture some texture and adds different shades of green. Each child had just one man to stick in the tree.

For another idea about telling this story see here.

Wonderfully made!

We are all wonderfully made! David writes in Psalm 139, ‘I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’.

There are lots of different crafts you can do that are all about people. Here’s a couple of ideas..

People shapes decorated with tissue paper

Use people shapes!

For this craft you need to make or buy people cut outs. (The ones in the picture are bought). Try to use the shapes that are different skin colours if you can. Paper shapes are best – there are some that are foam which aren’t suitable for young children so be careful when buying online. Provide shapes for clothes and crayons or felt tips for added detail. You could also add yarn for hair. Have variety for the children to choose from.

Close up of a people shape collage

Make a collage of faces – I used photos from magazines (you may recognise some famous faces!). It’s useful to collect free magazines form places like Tesco if you can or ask for donations. It’s much cheaper than printing pictures out at home.

Some song ideas

  • Head, shoulders, knees and toes
  • From my head down to my toes God loves me
  • Open shut them, open shut them, make your hands go clap
  • I’ve got a body, a very busy body – have a look at the video – it’s a great tune and you could add your own lyrics.

Tabitha -T-shirt craft

fabric pieces for craft
Tabitha-T-shirt craft
Tabitha - T_shirt craft

 Tabitha -T-shirt craft is a really lovely simple collage based craft. It is great to have a stash of fabric off cuts to use for craft – adding a different texture to paper and lots of colours.

The story of Tabitha (Dorcas) is found in the Bible in Acts 9:36-43. She was a follower of Jesus who helped others by making clothes. We used this story as an extension to ‘Thank you God for our hands’. The story was told to under threes using a bag of items that you need for sewing – scissors, material, thread, needle, pin cushion. These were taken from the bag one at a time and named. We also had a picture of Tabitha sewing. We didn’t talk about Tabitha dying and being bought back to life but you could do that with older children.

The above craft is a T-shirt outline to decoarte with fabric shapes and glue. I used a variety of colours and the children could also use crayons. A very simple craft but effective and fun.

Our Amazing bodies! – our mouths

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’.

Story time- our amazing bodies – our mouths

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.

Song time

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’.

Craft time

Paper plate collage of different foods to eat. Our amazing bodies our mouths Pictures of food

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!

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