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SSTN # 60 - August 7, 2006
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IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SSTN e-NEWSLETTER:
1) Veggie Tales Costume?
2) Fall Newsletter?
3) Explaining the Church
4) Keeping senior highers interested
5) Explaining the Church
Fall Sessions...Ready, Set, Go!
6) More Lessons
7) Lessons for 2 year olds
8) The amazing shrinking sunday school
9) Explaining the Church
10) More Lessons
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1) Veggie Tales Costume?
Hi , We are planning a Veggie tales opening to Sunday School in the fall
and I wondered if anyone has any suggestions for making some adult size
Bob and Larry costumes?
Thanks, Mary in Saskatchewan
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2) Fall Newsletter?
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone had any fun idea's or theme's for a Fall
Newsletter.
Thanks so much,
Lee-Anne
--from SSTN: any of the crafts, games or other ideas in the site can be
used, so long as you include copyright and website information next to the
activity:
http://www.SundaySchoolNetwork.com
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3) Explaining the Church
The church is a body made of many parts. If we were all one, an eye, then
we would not operate. 2Cor 12.. The pastor is a part, a more visible
part and so is the janitor that no one sees. If we did not have these
people using the gifts God gave them then we would not be complete. Have
the kids try to do something with their eyes covered. Have them try to
pick up something with their thumb and forefinger taped together. You get
the picture.
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4) Keeping senior highers interested
I teach preschool/kindergarten kids at church, so I'm coming at this with
experience not from teaching jr./sr. high kids, but from working with
them.
Can you involve the young people in your ministry - in choir or orchestra
or praise team, helping with the graphics if you use multi-media in your
church, helping teach younger kids, being greeters and/or ushers, etc? If
they help with younger kids, you'd want to have them only part-time, so
they wouldn't always miss their Sunday School class, church, or youth
group.
I have about 12 "big kids" (4th - 10th grade, at this point) who help me
on a rotating basis with my class, which meets during the church service.
Each year, I ask them to decide with their parents how often they can help
me (most come every other week or one week a month), then I make a
schedule. Since I have 25-35 kids, having the extra helpers is great for
me. The little kids enjoy the interaction with the bigger kids. And the
big kids are learning about how to teach a class, as I give them
assignments for part of the class-time.
Having an important role in serving the church (whether up front in the
choir or behind the scenes in the nursery) might help them stay involved,
when they are doing something useful, and they'll get to know some of the
adults, so when they become "grown-up" they may feel more welcome in the
church.
As I said, this is based on my experience as being one of the "helped",
rather than being a youth group leader or teacher, but I hope these are
helpful suggestions!
Linda
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Fall Sessions...Ready, Set, Go!
Bible-4-Life Curriculum from SundaySchoolNetwork.com is a
non-denominational publisher and is designed to systematically help your
children learn about Bible-times and God's plan for their lives today,
tomorrow and for all eternity!
You will find our products distributed to a wide variety of church
congregations and denominations throughout the world.
Are you ready for Fall sessions? Get set and go to:
http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com/Bible-4-life.html
You can also download samples before purchasing.
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5) Explaining the Church
This concept is difficult to teach to older students. It isn't easily
grasped by PreSchoolers but they will accept it if you tell them. One
way is with a shoe box set up to be a church building. During story
time , you tell them that this is a church building but we are really
God's church in the world. Sing-song a activity is to say " I'm a part
of God's church," "Brian is a part of God's church" have him grab onto
you as you have each member join the chain. Keep moving along as you
sing-song "we are all part of God's church." Have them shout out other
people in God's church. Then as they sit down in their storygroup tell
a story about a wonderful church family whose church burned down but
they found out that they could be a church to the community without the
building.
Diane Plum
dplum@hughes.net
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6) More Lessons
Check out www.gracelink.net for a fantastic curriculum for this age
group (Primary).
-Sharon
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7) Lessons for 2 year olds
I help with my pastors wife who teaches this age, and repetition is
important, like Jesus heals, we sing a song and march around the room,
have a picture of a sick person in bed with a nurse or Dr. or both,
keeping things very simple but fun, tell how Jesus heals us like this too,
and how He uses Dr's. nurses, Mommy's and daddy's, to take our temps, etc.
then for craft we take boxes of tissues and put flowers, stickers, what
ever you want so that they can give it to some one, family friends, as
"helping hands for Jesus". There are so many things we do, from Jesus
walking on water, bring a small container fill with water and have
floating boats, and Jesus, they get the story and have lots of fun, what
ever you do, remember their attention spans are short, so songs, (we also
use a puppet) lesson, craft.
God Bless
RI
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8) The amazing shrinking sunday school
I am the elementary education chair in a church that is struggling. We
need to strengthen the Sunday school, and recruit more children, but there
are a lot of other issues in the church as well that seem to be slowing us
down.
My immediate issue is this year. We have a 3-5 grade class which has
two students in it. The k-2 class will be much stronger this year. I'd
like to combine them as much as we can, just for the energy that comes
with greater numbers. The problem is that I don't want the older kids to
feel like they're being sent off to a little kids' class. I think they're
already a little sensitive about this.
Any suggestions out there? Thanks for your input!
Beckie
--from SSTN: when possible, "teach up". In this situation have the younger
kids move to the older kids' class. Beforehand tell the older kids they
will be used as "junior leaders", then pair the older kids with younger
ones. Make sure you look at past issues of SSTN for multiple aged
teaching:
http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com/archives.html
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9) Explaining the Church
Hi, here's my lesson plan on we are the church for preschoolers. I did a
seven week series on this topic, this was the opening lesson. Email if you
have questions.smerguson@earthlink.net Blessings, Christy
Not Just a Steeple
1 Corinthians 12:27 “You are the body of Christ. Each of you is a part of
it.”
Display Pictures: a store, a house, a church, group of people and soda can
What do you see? Describe there are a few kinds of buildings and one
picture of people, and a soda can Can anyone find the church picture? How
do you know it’s a church? Can anyone find the Pepsi? How do you know it’s
a Pepsi?
Let’s see what the bible calls the church. Read 1 Corinthians 12:27. In
this part of the Bible the writer Paul describes the church as a human
body. He says Jesus is the head of the body and each of us has a part of
the body of Christ. That means the church is the people. God’s church is
not a building. The building is nice, and needed to give us a place to
worship and have KinderPraise, but if there was no building there would
still be church. We could worship together at (child’s name’s house) or
have KinderPraise in the park. Whenever you gather together with other
Christians- other people who love Jesus, you all together make up the
Church. I am the Church, You are the Church, We are the Church together.
Now this soda can does hold the soda, and it keeps it cool and it’s easy
to
take on a picnic, but what we really want this can for is for what is
inside. It wouldn’t be very good to hold soda without some container. It’s
the same with the Church building. It’s comfortable place to use when it’s
hot outside or raining and we want it to look nice so people will come and
hear about Jesus, but what we really want is the people inside the
building. The real church is the people.
--from SSTN: excellent idea!
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10) More Lessons
Hi Tracee,
I ran into a similar problem with curriculum a couple of years ago. The
curriculum we were using repeated the same stories all the time. To top
that off, the curriculum jumped around a lot. Because of this, I
started creating lesson plans that started with the creation story and
went through the Bible in a chronological order. There is a wealth of
information and stories to be gained this way. This sound like a lot of
work and it is. However, it is well worth the time to create these
lessons and to actually be able to build from one lesson to another.
There are some wonderful web-sites and books that can be used to create
these lessons. I would be happy to talk to you in more detail if you
wish. Please e-mail me at scioart@yahoo.com.
Sincerely,
Connie G.
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