Give Us Today - A New Craft Idea...

 We have been studying the Lord's Prayer at Café Church, and on Sunday we reached "Give us today our daily bread". But what could I do with the children? They sit round a table at the side of the chapel, and we cannot make too much noise. We began by talking about food - why is it important?

• It gives us energy
• It helps us grow
• It keeps us healthy
• It makes us happy

I expanded the last point, and talked about 

1. eating favourite foods, and certain tastes giving pleasure. 
2. We discussed the fact that sharing food makes us happy [family Sunday Roasts, birthday parties- and sharing the food we have with others who do not have any]
3. Food makes us happy because it reminds us that God provides for our needs, and he cares for us.

We had a worksheet to colour in. But before we did the sheet, I wanted to do some sort of different craft. I have a handful of children, all under 7 [and some adult help!] but we do not have very long - and we cannot make a lot of mess.

After some internet trawling I came up with the idea of a stained glass window. This meant preparation on Saturday evening.

First I printed off a picture of a child kneeling in prayer. I typed "Give us today" and "our daily bread" using WordArt. That meant I could curve the words, and  flip them to mirror image. Then I took a lamintor sheet, and opened it up. I put the template underneath and traced the words and picture with a Sharpie onto the inner, matte side of the 'top' sheet,

I folded an A3 sheet of paper round the sheet, and folded the other blank sheet over it, and paperclipped it all round. Then I cut lots of squares of tissue into 4 [random quadrilaterals, not perfect squares] On Sunday I gave each child a bowl of tissue shapes and a glustick and encouraged them to cover the plastic sheet with squares, overlapping to leave no spaces.

They all enjoyed this, and it was relatively mess free! Whilst the other adults supervised colouring the worksheet, I took the tissued sheets across to the laminator. I removed the protective paper, flipped the 'picture' sheet over and put the whole thing through the machine.

Voila! a stained glass window. The children were really pleased with them, and I suggested they could tape them to a window when they got home to let the sunshine through.

At the end of the service, Pastor Nick invited them to come to the front and show their work to everyone - and for once, they actually shared the all key teaching points!

I think this craft could be developed in all sorts of ways - you could put any picture or wording on the top sheet, and maybe use different tissue shapes or set colourways for other lessons - not just Bible themes

Leaves and flowers [nature stuff] Red/orange/yellow flame shapes [Pentecost - or great fire of London]

Blue and green waves...etc etc

Because the Sharpie is on the inside, it cant get washed off. You do not need to stick every piece of tissue down completely - just a tiny dab in the centre will hold it in place till lamination 'fixes' it.