Messy Church
First - my niece is back in her own apartment with the proviso that she must leave one door unlocked whilst she is in the house.
Messy Church; the weather yesterday was pretty horrible, with 50+mph winds and pouring rain. As we arrived at Church to set up, the general thought was that there would probably be very few children coming. I did say, though, that it was possible that a few families might decide it was a better option than staying in the house as it wasn't fit for them to do anything else. By five past four it became obvious that that was a good guess as the place filled up rapidly and we had 17 children with asociated parents and grandparents and so on!
To cope with the two missing regular helpers I was doing one of the craft stations whilst the minister did the welcome and 'lets put a label on you and your name on a brown take home bag' bit. This means I didn't get to take many pictures as I couldn't leave my post!
Our theme was the story of Jesus telling the disciples off for keeping the children away - so children was one thread and 'God/Jesus loves me...' was the other.
I made 'babies in blankets'. Here are pictures of a couple of the ones the children made;
Take a small soft tortilla, cover it with either chocolate spread, peanut butter, or cream cheese, the make the 'baby' from a small banana and a marshmallow, folding the tortilla over to wrap it up. Edible chocolate eyes attached with chocolate spread and anything else you fancy (a quiff, a mouth...). Then colour your 'blanket' with diluted food colouring and add a pattern if you want out with chocolate jazzies. The end result actually tasted really good, too.
As the children moved into church for their story I grabbed a quick picture of some of the other things;
We give each child a brown paper sack to put their stuff into, or leave beside it to dry - and I realised I could get a few things in this shot. There were 'stained glass' hearts with 'God loves me!' written on the frame, a party hat type thing with a big heart with 'Jesus loves me' on and lots of decorations(most of them wore them for the story and food), a paper heart made from smaller and smaller pieces that said 'Jesus loves me - when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm good, when I'm bad,Jesus loves me no matter what!'.
And can you remember making a whole string of people holding hands by folding the paper and then cutting just one out and unfolding it? Well none of them had ever done it before and all thought it was something akin to magic! There was also the usual big paint project - this time I drew an outline of Jesus in the middle, asked someone to paint it for me, and then asked them all to paint themselves on the sheet. Always good fun the paint project!
By the time everyone had eaten pizza, and vegetable sticks, chocolate cake, mini chocolate teacakes and grapes, it was about 6pm, and as they all gathered up their bags to take home we found the wind had died down and the rain had stopped.
Today has been dry and calm - but it is the lull between the storms - we expect to be hit by Storm Brendan tomorrow with wind speeds of up to 70mph about the time I am due to pick the children up from school - oh joy!
Messy Church; the weather yesterday was pretty horrible, with 50+mph winds and pouring rain. As we arrived at Church to set up, the general thought was that there would probably be very few children coming. I did say, though, that it was possible that a few families might decide it was a better option than staying in the house as it wasn't fit for them to do anything else. By five past four it became obvious that that was a good guess as the place filled up rapidly and we had 17 children with asociated parents and grandparents and so on!
To cope with the two missing regular helpers I was doing one of the craft stations whilst the minister did the welcome and 'lets put a label on you and your name on a brown take home bag' bit. This means I didn't get to take many pictures as I couldn't leave my post!
Our theme was the story of Jesus telling the disciples off for keeping the children away - so children was one thread and 'God/Jesus loves me...' was the other.
I made 'babies in blankets'. Here are pictures of a couple of the ones the children made;
Take a small soft tortilla, cover it with either chocolate spread, peanut butter, or cream cheese, the make the 'baby' from a small banana and a marshmallow, folding the tortilla over to wrap it up. Edible chocolate eyes attached with chocolate spread and anything else you fancy (a quiff, a mouth...). Then colour your 'blanket' with diluted food colouring and add a pattern if you want out with chocolate jazzies. The end result actually tasted really good, too.
As the children moved into church for their story I grabbed a quick picture of some of the other things;
We give each child a brown paper sack to put their stuff into, or leave beside it to dry - and I realised I could get a few things in this shot. There were 'stained glass' hearts with 'God loves me!' written on the frame, a party hat type thing with a big heart with 'Jesus loves me' on and lots of decorations(most of them wore them for the story and food), a paper heart made from smaller and smaller pieces that said 'Jesus loves me - when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm good, when I'm bad,Jesus loves me no matter what!'.
And can you remember making a whole string of people holding hands by folding the paper and then cutting just one out and unfolding it? Well none of them had ever done it before and all thought it was something akin to magic! There was also the usual big paint project - this time I drew an outline of Jesus in the middle, asked someone to paint it for me, and then asked them all to paint themselves on the sheet. Always good fun the paint project!
By the time everyone had eaten pizza, and vegetable sticks, chocolate cake, mini chocolate teacakes and grapes, it was about 6pm, and as they all gathered up their bags to take home we found the wind had died down and the rain had stopped.
Today has been dry and calm - but it is the lull between the storms - we expect to be hit by Storm Brendan tomorrow with wind speeds of up to 70mph about the time I am due to pick the children up from school - oh joy!