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Advent Activities For Older Kids

A Mom's Job, Bible lessons, holidays 3 Responses »

Nov 272011

The days of stocking the Advent quilt with easy crafts and recipes for Santa Sugar are gone for me. I am a bit melancholy, but I am also looking forward of doing some new, fun things for older kids.

But, I have to think of them first….

Some thoughts are:

Filming a Family Christmas Commercial to post on Christmas day…this should take a day to plan, a day to film and a day to edit.
Continue with the Story Starters I started last year, they seemed to work well and were easy. I can do several of these to fill in busy days.
Write Christmas Cards to ill children.
Write Christmas Cards to solders.
Toy shop for our local toy program.
Caroling with Girl Scouts
Visit nursing home with Girl Scouts
Elf a neighbor
Visit Courthouse lights
Visit Olgobee (spell?) lights
Winter hike on winter solstice
Make baked goods a bit more advanced than simple cookies (Of course all baking is advanced to me! The girls do really well though.)
Meg’s Christmas Concert
Time Capsule letters (Me and Hubby this year too)
Reading aloud from our many, many Christmas books I break out every Thanksgiving.
Christmas movie marathon while making popcorn garlands for the birds.
Make ornaments with applesauce dough

Now my plan is to have a Bible verse to go with each day that breaks down the Christmas story. I just have to sit down and get it done before Thursday.

I would love a few more ideas! Please help us out. The kids are older, but they still look forward to the thought of the Advent quilt, they just get bored easily.

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A Cool Bible Lesson

Bible lessons 3 Responses »

May 252009

I taught Children’s Church this past Sunday. Several moms take turns teaching our kids and I usually teach every four weeks or so. Our topic lately has been forgiveness and Grace.

Two of the exercises in our lesson plan worked so well at illustrating Christ’s grace that I wanted to share them with everyone.

First we shared verse :

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

We then talked about sin, and how Jesus’ grace wipes our sin clean.

I had each child write a sin that they may struggle with on a coffee filter with a yellow highlighter. We kept things private and some kids just wrote down a letter to represent what they were thinking instead of words. I then squirted lemon juice over the words/letters and the writing disappeared immediately. The color slid right off the filter.

Fun, simple and very clear for the kids to understand.

After this experiment we got in a circle and crossed our arms, then joined hands with other kids who were not right beside us. Once we were all tangled up I gave out instructions like : Touch your nose (not letting go of the hands!), jump up and down on one foot, turn in a circle, etc. These actions were possible, but difficult because of the confusion of all the kids so close and connected. This shows how sin can complicate our lives and make things difficult. When confess our sins, our sins are gone and life is not so “tangled up”.

These two very simple lessons made God’s Grace much more clear for all of the kids, and helped me as a mom simplify a message that sometimes we tend to complicate.

What are some ways you teach your kiddos about God’s Grace?

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