Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for January, 2010

Wayne Stocks, over at Dad in the Middle, has blogged about his favourite web resources for childrens ministry workers.

Wayne says:

My struggle in developing this list was not to find adequate sites, but to limit them to just the top three for each category! The list person who dwells inside of me would have given you a list of every site I ever visited ranked by how useful I found them, but I decided to refrain. So, the following is a list of my personal Top 3 sites for various categories related to Children’s Ministry:

So we hope his list of  “Best of the Best – Children’s Ministry Internet Resources” is of benefit to you. Thanks Wayne!

You can make your Bible review games extra fun with this free downloadable game. Using two dice and some numbered laminated skittle images mounted on a board, you can play a game of 8-pin bowling with two teams.

If a team answered your review question correctly they throw the two dice. The numbers they throw determine which of their skittles or pins come off the board.

This game has been the cause of great excitement and a cliff-hanging finish! Sometime one team romps ahead and “knocks off” all their skittles except one. They are looking for the two dice numbers they need to make up that last number for the skittle. As each turn passes, and they do not find the right combination, the team that was so far behind is catching up. A great lesson on not giving up!

Incidentally, we found this worked well in schools, where teachers appreciated the children having a mental arithmetic work-out!

If you download this free add-on to your own review questions, you will find full instructions and printable skittles in a PDF.

FREE 8-Pin Bowling (Skittles) review Game

I didn’t become a Christian until I was an adult, and never found it easy to  learn the books of the Bible in order.  Children, though, have very retentive memories and we can give them a great tool if we help them learn the books in order.

Scripture Lady has a site packed full of fun ideas and excellent tips for children’s ministry. This week I stumbled across some posts she made about games for helping children become familiar with the names of the books in the Bible.

You can find the first 5 games here

Here is the second post, another bunch of games

Making learning fun is a sure-fire way of making it stick.

We once had a few kids round to our flat. Our living room was a tight fit with 8 childrens and two of us adults. But we had great fun with an Olympic games afternoon. We played:
“Discus” – who could flick their tiddly-wink the furthest?
“Bowls” – we used marbles
“Shot putt” – throwing bean bag into a bucket
“Relays” – were “run” by scuttling across the carpet on bottoms!
“Javelin” – baby buds are safe and can be thrown a remarkable distance!

We added our own games like fuzzy darts and “connect four”.

After the games we had an indoor picnic, followed by singing and a Bible lesson with plenty of visuals. Finally a quiz review game.

It was a very pleasant and memorable afternoon and evening that built strong relationships with the children.

Would you like to have the pick of the kids’ ministry – from all over the web – in one place…everyweek?

If the answer is yes, then you will love the weekly roundup at Ministry-to-Children.com.

With news, comment and practical help sources from the many excellent children’s ministry sites online, there is bound to be something to inspire and help you.

Onca again, here is that link to the This Week in Children’s Ministry for 1/20/2010