APPEARING ART: Provide children with heavy white card stock paper and a white color crayon. Children can draw a heart or wirite JESUS or other words from today’s lesson. Children can then use water colors of various colors to paint over their paper to have their art work appear!

HANDS LOVE CARD: Children can be given paper to trace their hands on a card, and draw red hearts in the middle. They can form the hands into a card and decorate and write words of God’s love to share with someone else.

JESUS IS ALIVE BOOK MARK: Construction paper, stickers, and markers can be given to children to be cut to the size of a book mark that is desired. This book mark should be folded length wise. One side can say, JESUS IS ALIVE. and the other side could have letters to say, I LOVE YOU, (or with the symbols–eye, heart, U)  JESUS!

PRAISE MARCH:

Give children flags, balloons and noise makers and praise the LORD with special words that they can repeat after you — with words from today’s lesson or from praise Bible verses!!

PRAISE BALLOONS:

Children can run a relay.  Pile some inflated balloons with praises written on strips of paper and placed inside the balloons before inflating.  The kids can run and grab a balloon and then pop the  balloons and read the PRAISE word inside and continuing popping as time allows.

BALLOON PRAISING:

Give each child a strong balloon and small pebbles or beads to place a few inside the balloon. The children can have a bright colored marker to write CELEBRATE JESUS or words from our lesson on the outside of their balloon. Then blow up the balloon and tie so children can shake the balloon while praising the Lord with song or Bible verse.

CELEBRATION STICKS:

Each child can be given a tongue depressor or craft stick. Color their sticks and then glue thin pieces of paper or crepe paper to the top end and children can raise their celebration sticks over head while reciting a Bible verse from today’s lesson, or to march around the room, using their homemade instruments and their celebration stick.

SHARE A SNACK:

Make a celebration circle and let children pass various bags of treats around the circle, taking one snack and passing it on. Every snack they take, they will share a praise.

EGGSHELL CROSS–START PREPARING FOR EASTER:

You may want to start this activity soon to prepare as a craft for one of the next few weeks.  Crush up some egg shells and put them in colored dye water and then lay out to dry on a paper towel. Use several different colors for many shells. Then, let children draw the frame of a large cross on their paper and begin gluing the various colors of eggshells to their cross. Write on their paper– THANK YOU JESUS FOR DYING ON THE CROSS FOR MY SINS.

LIGHTS ON, LIGHTS OFF GAME:

This is a fun activity just to use to review your lesson. Begin this activity with the lights off. The teacher will begin by asking a child a question about today’s lesson. If the child knows the answer to the question, they will jump up and run to the light switch and flip it on, and answer the question. After they answer the question, they will turn the classroom light back off and return to their seat. The teacher will ask several questions so everyone gets and chance and you have a fun way to reinforce today’s lesson.

POPCORN FORGIVENESS:

I know today’s lesson was on the Last Supper.  We were talking about the bread and the juice.  We were talking about the Last Supper before he died on the cross & rose again.  But, popcorn is always fun.  Pop some popcorn and give children a small popcorn bag to place their popcorn in! As they begin to take ONE popped corn at a time, tell them that GOD forgives us over and over again! Jesus died for our sins.  Each kernel can remind them of a time that GOD FORGIVES!  As we get closer and closer to Easter, we are learning what all Jesus went through before he died on the cross to forgive us of our sins.  Then rose again!

 

Hey everyone!  This is Miss Terri.  I am sure that all of you have seen a stethoscope. Who uses a stethoscope? That’s right, a doctor. Have you ever been sick? Of course you have, we have all been sick at some time. When you were sick, did you go to the doctor’s office, or did the doctor come to your house? You probably went to the doctor’s office because that is the way it is done these days.

You might be surprised to know that at one time it was quite normal for doctors to make “house calls.” The doctor would carry a little black bag filled with medical supplies and go to the homes of those who were sick.  That’s a good picture of what Jesus did when he was on earth. He went where the people were — especially people who were hurting or had problems in their life. One such person that Jesus ministered to was a tax collector by the name of Matthew. Tax collectors were hated in Jesus’ day because they were often greedy and dishonest. Jesus changed Matthew’s life and he became one of Jesus’ disciples.   Hope you enjoy today’s video . . .

FIRST AID GAME TRAY:

Place many medical first aid items on a tray and let the children look at the items for a minute. Then take the tray away and ask children to write or draw pictures of all the things that they can remember being on the tray. See how many of the items they can remember.  You may show it to them a second time to see if they notice anything they forgot or didn’t notice the first time. Have discussion about Jesus coming to heal the SICK and how that is different or the same as using first aid items if someone was sick or hurting.

SICK STICK MAN:

Let children stick a small amount of a molding clay round ball at the top of a craft stick and decorate that clay ball to look like a head (yarn for hair, mini choc chips or M&M’s for eyes, etc). Give each child a bandaid to wrap around their craft stick. If you use popsicle sticks, they will be wider for the stick man and bandaid. This can be stuck into a small amount of clay so the “sick stick man” can stand! Let children write Matthew 9:12-13 on the back of the stick, or they can write, “Jesus went to those who needed Him.”

FIRST AID SUPPLIES:

Blindfold children and have them reach into a bag of first aid supplies and hand that item to someone else who is blindfolded and see if they can describe and guess what the item is. Review with the children  that we are talking about the sick and people’s need for Jesus!

BUBBLES FUN:

Let children each blow many bubbles outside and watch the breeze blow them around. (This can also be done INSIDE if there is a fan available to blow the bubbles around). Children can be told that all those bubbles represent all the SICK and NEEDY people who need JESUS. Let children sit down outside and talk about our Bible story today and how MANY people need us to tell them about JESUS and HIS LOVE!

Click for Coloring Page

MORE FUN ACTIVITIES:

 

COUNTING SHEEP: Let the children work as a team and give each team a poster board and markers. When you say START…or BEGIN, the kids will see how quickly they can draw 99 sheep. (Provide some M & M’s or something small for all their hard work)!  It will amazing to see the 99 that he left to go find the 1!  We are each important to God!

SHEEP GAME: Put a little Vaseline on each child’s nose and let them see how many cotton balls they can get stuck on their face and nose in the allotted time. Make sure to take a picture of  the “sheep”! If time allows, the children can then see if they can run back and forth to get cotton balls from their noses to stick on an outlined picture of a SHEEP on the other side of the room. You can have some Vaseline smeared on the outline of the sheep on the poster board for children to stick their cotton balls from their noses on the board — no hands allowed!

COTTON BALL SHEEP: Give each child an outline of a sheep or the older children could draw a sheep on their own. Let them glue pieces of cotton on their sheep. Children can then use markers to draw grass, sky, sun, etc and write JESUS NEVER GIVES UP ON A LOST SHEEP.

 

What do you think of when you see this symbol? Right! You think of Nike. As you know, Nike is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sport’s equipment. At one time, they were just known as a running shoe company, but now they make sports equipment for just about every sport you can imagine. Probably just about everyone in the world would recognize this Nike symbol.

Whenever we think of Nike, we also think of their slogan, “Just Do It!” What does that mean? Well, since Nike is in the business of making sports equipment, it means that when it comes to sports, don’t talk about it — just do it! Don’t just talk about running, go out and run. Don’t just talk about basketball, go out and play the game. Don’t just talk about…well, I think you get the idea.

One day Jesus was with his disciples and they asked him to teach them how to pray. Jesus didn’t say, “Well, first you get down on your knees, like this; then you fold your hands like this; then you close your eyes; and then you start to pray.”  NO!  After giving them an sample prayer, he said to them, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” In other words, Jesus told his disciples that the most important rule of prayer is — “Just Do It!”

When we come to church, we talk a lot about prayer, don’t we? When someone is sick, we say, “We need to pray for the sick.” When someone is having financial problems, we say, “We need to pray for the poor.” When there is war in the world, we say, “We need to pray for peace.” We talk a lot about prayer, but what we really need is to “Just Do It!” In fact, I think we should stop talking about it right now — and “Just Do It!”

 

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

HEART HUNT-You can choose your own verse.  Psalm 51.10 is the Bible verse on the Dot-to-Dot or the Song today is the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6 or Luke 11:

Before class begins, hide some hearts in Bible’s around the room. Each heart can have a word from today’s Bible verse and children will find their verse hearts in the Bibles. You can decide if you want to print the verse once or once for each kid.  If they find a heart but already have that word of the verse, then they must put it back in the Bible for the other kids to find. Children can help each other find all the words and put them in order and see if they can complete AND “SAY” the verse together!

DECORATING HEARTS:

HEART BOOK:

Make a sticker book by folding construction paper in half or even a couple of pages.  The children can write a Bible verse on one page, as well as other phrases/ideas from today’s lesson, such as I LOVE JESUS, GOD KNOWS YOUR HEART, GOD FIXES HEART PROBLEMS, GOD LOOKS ON THE INSIDE, etc. on the other pages.  Then decorate the pages with many different heart stickers and drawing of hearts. 

HEART CUPCAKES:

You can have cupcakes baked and ready for class. You can let the kids frost them by putting icing in a heart shape. You could let each child use a frosting gel tube and write their names on the cake or write Jesus’ name.  Or you could let them frost then draw a heart with the tube.  They can enjoy their creation and make a second one or more as gifts to give away for Valentine’s Day.

LION FREEZING:

The children can crawl around the room and roar until the “ANGEL” says to FREEZE. Everyone stops until the “ANGEL” says to move again. Play as time allows and then children can sit in the LIONS DEN to hear how God closed the lions’ mouths, in our story today. 

 

Game, Craft, & Snack Ideas…

LION, LION, DANIEL:

PRAYER WHEEL:

SHARE A SNACK:

Children could be given a round cookie and place orange cheese balls, puffs, or crunchy cheetos around the edge as the lion’s mane or grated cheese around the edges of the lion’s head and raisins for the eyes, if desired.