The Sunday School Teacher's Network Newsletter - Great ideas for children's ministry!


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Issue #70 - November 1, 2007 Previous issues can be found in the Archives.	Home \| Search \| Support SSTN
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"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." -- Jesus
1) Jesus' Geneology 2) Involving Parents? 3) Praise & Worship 4) Thanksgiving Lesson? 5) Philemon & Onesimus? Pilgrim & Indian Finger Puppets Print out as many patterns as you need for $4.99. Click here. 6) Training Manual? 7) Life's Temptations Video 8) Scripture Memory Technique 9) Overcoming Evil With Good 10) End to Halloween Comments	Squanto's Thanksgiving (In the Christian Skits Fall section)
	This book speaks of God's wrath being like a great swarm of locusts that will destroy them if they don't repent. (The answer is in this newsletter)
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1) Jesus' Geneology It will take someone smarter than I to explain it (Like Maurice Sweetsur!) but I supposed everyone knew that the genealogy in Luke is Mary's family line and the one in Matthew is Joseph's. By Jewish tradition, it was necessary to show both lines because the kingly line came through the man. When we start trying to make the Scriptures conform to our own understanding, we are on dangerous ground. Notice in Matthew, verse 16 the begets change, It is now just the husband of Mary. That is no accident. Mary's father was Heli and Joseph was Heil's son-in-law. Helen Setser

2) Involving Parents? I just want to say thank you for this wonderful network site. I have benefited greatly from it. I'm part of a small inter-denominational church in Thailand and have been in the children's ministry since we came here. The children in our Super Church (that's what we call our Sunday School) are either English speakers or Thai speakers. At times it can be a challenge to conduct a game or lesson when the message does not really get across to our Thai children. We do not have a permanent translator, and we are in need of more volunteers in Super Church. Any ideas on how to get the whole church or at least, parents, to be more involved in our children programs? Again, thanks for keeping this network going. God bless you. Lisa Sofiar in Thailand. --from SSTN: don't forget to check the archives for previously discussed postings. Use the "Search" link above.

3) Praise & Worship Hi We have developed a really good praise & worship time with our kids. We use the My G.O.D. is B.I.G. (pronouncing the letters) My G.O.D. is B.I.G. My G.O.D. is B.I.G. My GOD is BIG. We do this to a rythm you could do your own. After doing this a few times I get the kids to shout out My God is? They come up with their own ideas, we go around all the kids individually. You can go through the alphabet My God is amazing, My God is Brilliant, My God is cool and so on. Sometimes we get them to come up with a word starting with the same letter as their name starts. EG Hannah, My God is Happy, Sarah My God is Super. It works well because it gets the children speaking out. We have a quiet time where we listen to a quiet worship song and focus on God and listen to what he wants to say to us. It is amazing what the kids share after this. Pictures and simple words from God. We then have a prayer time and finally a praise time. We have a dance group all aged 7-10 called Generation G-Force they lead this part and teach routines. We use Hillsongs kids and Audasciuos songs. Since we have been doing this we have seen a real change in our kids attitude towards it. Even the quietest ones want to get involved. If I can be of any further help you can e-mail me direct at trinitysolutions@blueyonder.co.uk Shirley Watts UK

4) Thanksgiving Lesson? I am looking for a Sunday School lesson about Thanksgiving. I teach 6-12 years. If you know of any resources. Grace and peace be yours more and more! Candi Rye --from SSTN: check out the "Sermons and Object Talks" link, above.

5) Philemon & Onesimus? Hi there - I'm a bit stuck on teaching the kids about Philemon & Onesimus? Has anybody got any ideas or lessons that have worked for you? Thanks heaps, Nicola --from SSTN: The book of Philemon is about forgiveness and acceptance. Onesimus, a slave to Philemon, had stolen from him and ran away. While on the run he met Paul and became a Christian and was willing to return to Philemon. Paul wrote this book to urge Philemon to forgive him and accept him back, not as a slave but as a brother in the faith. Paul urges him to forgive out of love and because of his faith.

6) Training manual? Hello everyone, Can anyone send me a link to a manual I can use for my Sunday school to help train the teachers. Any other training material will be welcome. Please send what you have to Oduenyi.ahaneku@gmail.com . Love, Oduenyi

7) Life's Temptations Video http://www.godtube.com/view_video?viewkey=ee73e63418003b47d7d5

8) Scripture Memory Technique This idea may be old hat to some of you, but in my class of 1-3rd graders, we love putting our memory verses to familiar tunes. For our Genesis study we used the tune for "Are you sleeping?" You can sing these words twice: "In the beginning God Created The Heavens and the Earth Genesis 1:1" "Jingle Bells" became: For while we Were still weak At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, Romans 5 verse 6 (Hey!) We have several others - once you get the hang of it they are easy to create. I usually keep the same memory verse until the entire class learns it - three to four weeks - and we review them all in the first few minutes of class. Kids love memorizing at this age, but since most of my class is in AWANA, (and working very hard at memorizing verses for that program) they don't always devote extra home time to learning the ones I assign. This has been a great solution. Hope this helps, Susan

9) Overcoming Evil With Good Thank you for the idea about overcoming evil with good. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I had children and a lot of responsibility very young. I made many mistakes during my life so I loved the chance to be someone else for a day. I was also an actor in school. As I grew in faith I realized I could not in good conscience celebrate in the manner I had in the past. I banned witches and anything remotely satanic from our home display. My husband is very handy and loves to make elaborate displays every year. I let him have skeletons because I don't feel that there is anything scary about the human body. Being dead is only scary if you haven't accepted Christ. I know he is disappointed that I don't enjoy his creativity as I used to. Halloween has become a sore spot in our marriage. I will continue to pray that he grows in faith. Next year I will give him license to create whatever he wants as long as good wins. Jeni Czysz

10) End To Halloween Comments I thought we weren't doing Halloween comments etc. anything. --from SSTN: This is it. They're done (at least until until next year).

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This issue's Bible Trivia answer is, "The book of Joel". Used by permission. From the game, Bible Stack-O!
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