Effective Children's Ministry » Bits and Pieces

Valentines Day craft, games and lesson plans

EffectiveCM — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:00:42 +0000

That great resource site for all things kidmin, Ministry-to-Children.com, has gathered together a bundle of ideas for your Valentine’s Day children’s ministry:

5 lesson plans
4 craft session
2 game ideas

All focus on Christ’s love for us, and how we can practically show our love for others.

For this wealth of ideas, visit the Ministry-to-Children Valentine’s Day ideas and resources page.

You may also be interested in:

Our own Valentine’s day Free PowerPoint Game.

Fun can change behaviour

EffectiveCM — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:45:30 +0000

This video shows how some engineers changed the behaviour of people who usually preferred the escalator to the staircase.

Do you think this principle has any relevance to children’s ministry?
Feel free to comment below!

Free PowerPoint Christmas matching game

EffectiveCM — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:06:39 +0000

This game is a simple PowerPoint “Concentration” game. Matching pairs of Christmas objects are lined up behind penguins with numbers. Pick a pair of penguins and see if the hidden objects match. If not, they get covered again ready for the next team to match.

Full instructions are included in the file which you can download below. If you do not have PowerPoint on your computer, this presentation will still run. This is a self playing version which will start itself and fill your screen. Use the mouse to click the items, as outlined in the instructions (on the last slide). It’s ideal for playing with a child in your family while at the computer! Or maybe giving your own little grey cells a work-out!

RIGHT-click on the links below to download the PowerPoint and save it to your computer.

Download Christmas Concentration Powerpoint Game (.ppt format)

Download Christmas Concentration self-opening Powerpoint Game (.pps format)

OTHER RESOURCES
By the way, have you seen our other free Christmas game? You can read about Christmas Cookie CountPowerpoint game here.

There is also a version you can print and laminate. Here is the post that tells you all about the free Christmas Cookie Count printable game.

New email updates are working!

EffectiveCM — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 00:10:02 +0000

From today, if you prefer, instead of having to remember to pop back here to Effective Children’s Ministry to check if there is another post, you can subscribe for free and get the articles sent to you by email.

All this is done through a third party, Feedburner, and we have no access to the email list. It won’t be passed on to anyone else and as we hate getting spam, we won’t spam you!

In the right sidebar you will also find buttons which will take you to our Twitter account and Facebook page. These are two ways that you can be informed when there is new content. We’ll also give you a quick link back here so you can view the posts in full.

There is also an RSS button for those of you that prefer to be updated via your feedreader.

Take your pick! We hope the content here is useful for you

Testing our new email subscriptions!

EffectiveCM — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:34:15 +0000

This is a test post to see if our new Feedburner powered email subscription service is working.

The priority of children’s ministry

EffectiveCM — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:49:27 +0000

“If I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry
to reaching children for God!”– Dwight L. Moody

“We believe that children and young people should be
the single greatest priority for Christian work in the coming
decade.”
“If children’s work is neglected you lose the next generation.
– Patrick Johnstone

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will
not see.” – John Whitehead

What are we talking about?

EffectiveCM — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:25:17 +0000

Earlier in the year, challenged by Wayne Stocks over at Dad in the Middle, I created a “Wordle” for this blog.

To quote the Wordle site :

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

If you look below you will see our recent Wordle. If you are wondering why the word “asparagus” ( not a word you use every day!) is so prominent, it is because it was featured, and frequently referred to, in a recent post: 3 things I learned from planting asparagus.

It is interesting, also, to see the prominence of the social media. This is because every post now has a wee tool bar underneath it so that readers can email, print, make PDFs or “like” items on Twitter or Facebook.

It is just a bit of fun, but still gratifying to see the words God, Ministry, Children and Work showing up boldly. After all, isn’t that what summarizes the lives of children’s ministry workers?

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Wayne’s October Kidmin Mega Bundle

EffectiveCM — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:39:17 +0000

We used to call it a Bumper Bundle. But now the monthly round up of Children’s Ministry blogs by Wayne Stocks (aka Dad in the Middle) has gone MEGA!!

The list of blog posts from around the ‘net is comprehensive, varied, fascinating and above all else, thoroughly useful.

As it is divided into categories, you can browse the list for whaat you are interested in. This month’s list includes:

Featured Article of the Month
Kids & the Gospel of Christ
Kids & Culture
On Teaching & Working With Kids
General Ministry Issues
Discipline
Leaders and Leadership
Volunteers
Family Ministry / Orange
Special Needs
Kids & The Bible
Games
Internet Sites and Resources
Coloring Pages
Other Kidmin Resources (Music, Conferences, Etc.)
Other General Resources (Bible Study, Theology, Etc.)
Curriculum and Object Lessons
Parenting and Marriage Issues
Devotions for Kids and Families
Just For Fun

So why not go over now to the October 2010 Children’s Ministry Blog Patrol. There’s a wealth of good stuff to browse and bookmark for later use.

New kidmin blog directory

EffectiveCM — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:46:57 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great to see a whole stash of children’s ministry blogs listed in one place? Somewhere you could go to get the latest posts and Tweets? And all as they are being uploaded?

You will find just that at the new CM Blitz site, a kidmin blog directory from CMBuzz.

You’ll find sections on ”what’s new”, “what’s hot” , as well as fresh posts from Twitter (tweets), refreshed in real time.

It is more than a list of blogs, because with one click you can access individual blog posts from each of the listed sites. Hit the graphic above to hop on over and have a look. Better still, why not bookmark the page and visit often? If at first you don’t see anything, scroll down and you’ll find the lists.

Not only for children!

EffectiveCM — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:12:12 +0000

From time to time we hear of people using the material on EffectiveChildrensMinistry.org in ways you might think are unusual.

The brightly coloured visuals and review games have been very useful for those working with elderly people.

Youth groups have used some of the teaching and review games.

Home study groups for adults have also found the PowerPoint presentations valuable.

Individuals have used the PowerPoints in their laptops to share Bible truth in one-to-one situations.

So feel free to use and adapt whatever you find here, in order to communicate the gospel effectively to whatever age range you are working with.