Tuesday 11 September 2012

Fruits of the Spirit: Love (with 5-7s!)

This term our focus is the Fruits of the Spirit so our first session looked at LOVE.

We've done a lot of work on God's love for us, so I thought we'd look a little bit at how we show love for each other.



As we have a lot of non- readers, I wanted to use symbols rather than words to give the message and I wanted the session to be interactive!  

First we discussed what we thought love was.  Between ourselves we decided that love was showing someone we really cared a lot about them.   Then we found the symbols that would help us to understand a bit more about the example of the early Christians who were showing love to each other (the verse we looked at was Acts 2: 44-46).  I wanted this to be a surprise so I made some 'punch bowls'.  We often put things in balloons and pop the balloons to reveal words or items, but some children don't like the popping sound.  This is much quieter but still fun!

First I got a cardboard bowl and drew round it to make some tissue paper circles.

Then we put the symbols inside each bowl .  The symbols are all familiar items for the children!:
Heart= love
Socks= sharing things
Coins= selling things and giving the money to the poor
Cross= worship
Cake= sharing food


Then I stuck the tissue paper over the top of each bowl so the children could punch through the paper and find the symbol.  Bowls can be reused many times just by sticking more tissue over the top!

The children really loved this!


After we'd talked about the symbols we acted part of it out by sharing some biscuits and eating together.  Then the children played a board game based on the verse, using the symbols we had looked at.
For more information on the game and for a printable version click here


After playing the game, we talked about how we could show love to people in our families.  Children thought of things such as pushing a baby's pushchair or making them a cake.  We then drew them on pieces of paper to take home as reminders.  Children also took a copy of the game so they could play it at home.  As they left some were quite eager to explain it to their parents!

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