Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for the ‘Games Ideas’ Category

A great source of tried and tested ideas is the ChildrensMinistry.com online magazine.  You can sign up for their email newsletter and get loads of helpful and relevant information.

This week they flagged up a group  game for 6-12 year olds. Octopus is fun to play, especially as when a child is “out” he is also “in”.

Here’s how it works:

What to do: Create two home bases on either end of a large play area. Choose someone to be the Octopus. Have all the other children start on one home base. Once kids leave home base, they have to get to the other base before getting tagged by the Octopus. When kids are tagged, they join hands with the Octopus. The Octopus works together to catch other kids.

Once an Octopus has six people, it breaks in two. Play until all children have been tagged.

For this and other great ideas, visit ChildrensMinistry.com

Have you discovered a helpful site with resources and ideas for children’s ministry. Why not let us know by adding a comment below?

Scripture Lady (aka Kathy Vincent) has a wonderfully vibrant ministry to children.

Her goal is to get kids excited about the Bible – and judging by the videos on her site, God is helping her to do just that, through Bible memory work, song and activities.

Hers is definitely a site worth visiting. And once you are there, why not sign up for Kathy’s free email newsletter. She sends out tips and ideas that don’t appear on the web site, and every one is a tried and tested winner!

With Kathy’s permission we are sharing one of her email goodies with you today. She has entitled this one…

Sail on Sailor – A Fun Scripture Activity for Your Elementary Kids

Scripture Lady writes:

“There is something thrilling about being on a boat.  Whether in a little canoe out on a quiet lake or on a sailboat out in the middle of the ocean, boating is a beautiful way to enjoy God’s creation. 

The Bible has some interesting ship stories.  Here is a list of 9 Bible passages about boats.  You will use them for the following activity:  Genesis 7:1, Exodus 2:3, Jonah 1:3, Luke 5:3, Matthew 13:2, Matthew 8:24, John 6:21, Acts 27:41 and Matthew 4:21-22.

For this idea, I suggest you obtain a kiddie pool filled with water.  Next, if you can, purchase 12 toy plastic boats (your local dollar store will probably have some) and with a permanent marker, number each one with a number from 1 to 12 and set them afloat in the pool.  Now, you will need to create 2 charts – one for your eyes only and the other for all the children to see.  The first chart should be written out as follows: 

1. Genesis 7:1 
2. Exodus 2:3
3. Ship Sunk!
4. Jonah 1:3
5. Ship Sunk!
6. Luke 5:3
7. Matthew 13:2
8. Matthew 8:24
9. John 6:21
10.  Acts 27:41
11.  Ship Sunk!
12.  Matthew 4:21-22

The second chart that the children can see, should contain these 9 different captions:

Noah’s Ark

Moses’ Basket Boat

Jonah’s Ship

James’ and John’s Boat

Peter’s Boat

Parable of the Sower was Told

Jesus calmed the Sea

Jesus Came Here after Walking on Water

Paul’s Shipwreck. 

I actually wrote my on pictures of boats I found on my computer.

To play the game, divide your children into 2 teams.  Have a child from the first team “fish” a boat out of the pool.  He will look at the number on the boat and tell it to you. 

You will look on the first chart and see whether the child will read a verse or whether his ship has sunk. 

If his ship sunk, the play goes to the next team.  If he is to read a verse, he does so from a Bible and then tries to pick the caption that matches the passage he just read.  If successful, he gets 50 points for his team.  The team with the most points wins!  Happy sailing!”

Thanks for that fun activity idea, Kathy!
If you like this idea, why not go on over to ScriptureLady.com, have a look round for more great ideas and then join her email list.

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.

With all the snow and ice we have had lately (at least here in Scotland!) we thought it would be nice to upload our new Scuba Diving  review game.
It is a colourful way of boosting the level of the fun, because there are surprise bonuses to be won.
It all depends on whether the children pick an exotic fish, shells, or polluting rubbish!

• Ask a question on the Bible lesson. If a child answers correctly, they receive points for their team (say 50) and then they choose a number card to see how much of a bonus they get.
• Bonuses are collected by the child choosing a number, which is taken off, leaving the underwater item behind on the display board.
• Depending on what the item is, bonuses are added to the team’s score. No bonus is added if rubbish is found.
• Bonuses are suggested on the printout and you might like to cut out and laminate that card as a permanent reminder to you and for all to see as they play the review game. 
• The winner is the team with the most points after all the items have been revealed, or when time is up.

Full instructions, visuals and a suggested list of bonuses are included in the free download.

It is a hefty file (just over 2 mb) so we have zipped the files. You will need to extract them when you have downloaded the zip file.
If you are not sure how to do that, just let us know and we’ll send you an uncompressed file.

Right-click on the link below and then save the file to your computer.

The Scuba Diver review game: a free PDF download