Check out worshipping with children.

This is from Australia.  I thought it was interesting - an astute observer. You may have access to other thoughts like this, and this is a year old so you can read it and look back at the past year all at the same time. This particular site seems not to be scaremongering.

Do you ponder the patterns you see in families and children you work with and how it affects your interaction and a child's faith?
 

I routinely search the referrals on my site meter to see where people come from and/or what they are looking for.

Here is a resource site that I may have posted long ago but they have a FB page: The Child Theology group. Lots of post-ers. Lots of followers. Downloads.


Happy Resurrection Sunday weekend, people!! Now, off to find out what's happening w/emerging kids on FB. . .

Somebody was looking for a rebus for Psalm 139.

Do you know how to create a rebus?

Pick a story (in this case, from scripture) that uses a few nouns over and over- preferably nouns that can be substituted with a simple drawing or clip art image. If you simplify the language for early readers (assuming the story lends itself to that without sacrificing the Word), it's fun or at least it's something different.

If you're telling the story, use the pictures as story cards. Hold up a sheep picture for "sheep" but don't say the word. Hold up the picture and let the kids say the word.

Use your imagination and have some fun with it.

Friendly Strangers

From one of my favorite dog sites, "My Smart Puppy". Maybe my favorite. I thought this article was about kids and dogs but it isn't. It is a very well-conceived game to play with your kids to teach them the proper response to a friendly stranger. As a dog-trainer, teacher, parent, and once a child. . . "Read this!" This is WONDERFUL! Sarah's a great trainer!

Frankly, sadly, this advise should probably also apply to child, teen, anyone who asks your child to go do something without asking you first. If you are a child, even if another child asks you to go with them, you stop and go ask mom or dad.

Thoughts about justice. Worth reading at Celtic Odyssey.

Mark 11. (I was looking for the passage about Palm Sunday. Here it is in one of the gospels)

The close up view is to look at the "Hosanna" story and see how many details you notice. The zoom out story is to look at the simple, obvious big picture.

What age would you tell this story to? What parts would appeal to which age? How can you tell it without compromising the story? If you were a child, and you were there, what would it be like? What would you see & hear and experience? As a toddler or preschooler? As an elementary aged child, as a pre-teen, as a teen, as a parent? How about someone who wasn't a parent? Was it common in that culture NOT to be around children? What can you discover about Jesus?

How many different stories are there in this chapter? (There may be more than the headings in your Bible.) Look at them one at a time. How is it that this story goes with the other stories in this chapter? What ages would you tell them too? Why? Do you find the same stories with the "Hosanna" story in the other gospels? Which stories? Does it matter?

What about the variations on one story from gospel to gospel? Same stories, different writers, different points of view. Still God's story - the story of His Son. Still God's Word.

This is just for fun. Lent. Easter. 'Tis the season.

This is a site with old pictures from Children's Bibles. Someone came looking for "the teaching boat" which I thought was a neat phrase for the boat Jesus taught from. Here's another page from the same site.

I'm going to post this and then go look for sites for Bible Art.

Take your familiar holidays, read the familiar passages the way a storyteller would, without visuals and props and let the story (God's Word) do it's work. Or read it and then gather images that people have created over the centuries and flip through from the oldest to the newest and see what you see. See how the artist interpreted the story but also see how people's cultural perspectives changed. What stayed the same. What changed? What part of the story did they focus on?

One of my favorite Psalms: Psalm 139. . . when you think toddlers, think "fearfully & wonderfully made..." When you think teens or pre-adolescent. When you think about individuals.