Youth Prayer Room

So....kind of crafts with kids, just older ones and with of a more creative meets spiritual feel!

Last Sunday I was to lead a session on 'prayer' with our 11+ Sunday School group. After setting up many prayer spaces in the past I was keen to do something along the same lines- lets face it, prayer is something you do rather than just talk about. Normally prayer spaces take aaaaaages to set up and I was only having an hour session with these guys- seemed like a lot of work!

Anyhow, I found a great discussion/talk thingmy in YouthWork Magazine about prayer and it had a guide for a discussion followed by a simple prayer space based on James 5v13-20

"Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. ¹⁴ Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

¹⁷ Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. ¹⁸ Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

¹⁹ My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, ²⁰ remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins."

It then goes on to suggest ideas for 5 different prayer stations for each type of prayer mentioned.

Here is a plan from the room I used and some photos (taken on my phone so not brill!) for the different zones

Prayers for difficult times- this was really chilled out, pretty lights, encouraging bible verses on the walls, I hung a side on the gazebo so it only had one side open making it fairly private. People had paper to scribble on and write their thoughts/prayers on.

Prayers for good times- just lots of bright coloured art stuff and paper stuck to the floor!

Prayer for forgiveness- the article I read suggested having water to wash hands with to symbolise getting clean after giving stuff to God. I added to this giving a bin to write and "bin sin!" and also Magna Doodles to write sins to give to God and then erase them.

Prayers for healing- we just had an area with a church elder waiting to pray!!!

Prayers for others-again I added to this area, it was supposed to be just one large candle and tea-lights for people to light as they prayed for someone else, I added the world map and post-it notes to widen the scope of the prayers and to add more activity as we had quite a lot of people in the room!

And that's about it, we also had some worship music playing quietly and as you can see from the pictures the room was lit by fairy lights and lamps which gave it a really nice atmosphere.

Have fun with creative prayer!

Painting Post #1

This is the first post about painting....there will be many more I am sure as we do like to paint!

I know a lot of parents who don't like painting at home because it is classed as 'messy' and tend to leave this area of creativity to toddler groups and pre-school!

So I thought I'd start off my "Painting with kids 101" with some less messy alternatives!

This post shows using clear colouring book pictures for painting and some age appropriate resources.

Yesterday my 4 year old and 1 year old asked to paint, they started off with plain paper but then my daughter (the 4yo) asked for a picture to colour in with paints. We have quite a few colouring books with bold clear pictures in so I tore out some pages for them to paint.

My daughter was using a simple palette of water colours- I bought these in Woolworths (may it rest in peace!!) but have picked some cheap ones up in Tesco as well. I find water colours great for a quick fix of painting, I don't need to dirty lots of pots with bright poster paint, one brush can be used with one pot for washing and they are more contained and less messy. A found it very easy to get the colours she needed and also confidently experimented with mixing colours in the lid of the paint box. She generally doesn't have the patience for colouring in but really enjoyed painting in the pictures- I think the speed she could fill the spaces really helped her!

T who is 20 months old uses bottle paints to paint. These are small bottles of paint (these are from Sainsbury's) with a gauze top to them that means small amounts of paint are released at a time causing minimal mess. I have found, similarly with felt tip pens, he tends to get it all over his hands but the mess seems to be confined to there!! He loves using them and really helps him with learning his colours. The paints do say not suitable for 0-3years but I take this as "he can use them with close supervision!" This is his masterpiece- he obviously didn't spend as long on his as his sister!!!

Have fun........and get those paints out! :)

Recipe: Mint Matchmaker Cookies

As Mint Matchmakers are on offer in Sainsbury's at the moment.....£1 (usually £1.99) I have been stocking up to make Matchmaker cookies! I made a batch today with my daughter and her best friend who had come to play. There are many little jobs in this recipe with children can help with.....it involves a lot of mixing!!

This is the recipe....it is for regular gooey Choc Cookies but I substitute the chunks of chocolate for Matchmakers.

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter

450g of dark chocolate (or 225g of dark choc and a packet of mint matchmakers)

2 eggs

17og soft light brown sugar

1/4 tsp Vanilla extract

85g Plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

Method

-Preheat oven at 170 degrees C (don't know equivalents because I only wrote down for my oven!!)

-Put butter and dark chocolate (or half chocolate if making plain cookies) in a pan and melt and then put to one side

-Put eggs, sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl and beat until well mixed

-Pour in the chocolate mixture and beat on a low setting/stir until well combined

-Sift flour, salt and baking powder into a separate bowl then stir in the chocolate mixture in 3 additions

-Stir in broken pieces of a whole box of matchmakers (or roughly chopped chocolate)

- The recipe says to divide it into 6-8 cookies but I found these were a bit large. Today I made 16 and they took the same cooking time!

- Bake for 10-15 mins checking regularly after 10 mins.

*TIP* Use a non-stick baking liner/greased baking parchment as these go very gooey and stick very easily, even to a greased baking tray!

These are the big version!

Happy cooking!

Fi

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Autumn Walk and Rainbow Art

Last week, the kidlets and myself were having a bad afternoon- we were all fed up. It was a lovely sunny autumn day however so I decided to take them for a nature walk in some meadows near to our house.

I was quite pleased with myself as I am definitely a mum who can easily sit and stick, paint, read stories etc but lack in the 'get out and run around' side of parenting! We just hung a carrier bag for collecting Autumn 'bits' on the push chair and donned the wellies!

We were out about an hour and a half just exploring the trees, a stream, fields etc The kidlets really enjoyed the freedom of running around as we have quite a small garden at home!

When we got home and mini-T had gone to bed, A and I looked at all the things we'd collected. We divided them into colour groups and laid out a rainbow on a large piece of paper. We didn't stick it, we just took pictures to keep a memory of it. If we'd thought about it and had more time, I supposed we could've pressed all the items and then stuck them down for a more permanent piece of art!

But we were quite pleased with the result!

Happy collecting!

Introduction!

Hello!

My name is Fiona and am a mummy to 2 lovely children- a daughter of 4 and a son of 20 months.

I have recently been inspired by many mums who are writing really cool blogs to inspire and inform. I thought I'd join in to help keep my brain in gear and to hopefully inspire people myself!

I have always been a little creative but am also a bit of a perfectionist! More recently I have been more free, letting my children explore their own creativity and I intend to document a lot of this in my blog.

Things my blog will contain (hopefully!)

-Tried and tested art and craft projects for children (some my own ideas- some tested from other sources)

-Posts about the prayer room I help run at my church

-Other crafty projects and maybe the odd recipe!

Welcome and enjoy!

Fi

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