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Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category

Why We Love Ventures

Posted in Church, Fun, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 12 August, 2010| 4 Comments »

Last week we got back from the Edgehill Pathfinder venture. We’d stayed in  a boarding school in Devon with our kids, a brilliant bunch of leaders and 65 11-14 year olds. We had loads of fun (3 wonderful beach trips, fantastic crafts, excellent games and some lively humour, which included the consumption of delights such as oven-baked tarantula). We made lots of friends (even us mummies who were caring for kids whilst the dads led activities). And we heard the gospel told afresh. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer were old enough to attend the sessions alongside the Pathfinders for the first time this year and they (aswell as their teenage friends) were gripped by the lively and faithful teaching.

The head honcho, Tim Ambrose posted this thanksgiving prayer letter on his blog last week:

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Kids in Church – Poll Results

Posted in Family, Fun, Kids, Parenting, Polls, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 9 August, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Sorry not to have posted these results before. Somehow it’s harder to find time to do things in the holidays… Anyway, here they are:

Technique Votes Percentage
Colouring/quizzes 23 21%
Books 21 19%
Other (see below) 15 14%
Extensive pre-service briefing on loving ones neighbour by not distracting them 13 12%
Breadsticks or other healthy snack 12 11%
Threats 8 7%
Cuddly toys 8 7%
Sweeties or similar 7 6%
My kids always sit nicely, I don’t know what you’re talking about 1 1%

Other Answers (all 1 vote each)

Participation

  • taking time to answer all questions about what’s going on and being said
  • Get them to play in the music group!
  • OH actually tries to get him to follow the lesson and sing the hymns!
  • cuddles, sitting on knee and talking about what is going on
  • Participation in the worship
  • Quietly talking them through what’s happening.

Training

  • Teaching and training parents in how to develop their kids’ attention level

Extreme

  • Gags
  • taser

Distraction/other

  • wandering round with them so they can focus on something ‘more interesting’;
  • Not always possible but don’t take them until they want to
  • “What’s Daddy doing now?”
  • Have child-focused services and a creative vicar
  • Just letting them be
  • i dont have kids!

So the recommended techniques seem to be a combination of activities (including participating in the service), food and working on expectations (both children’s, parents’ and congregation’s – the latter was mentioned more in the comments).

It’s a tricky area for us all I suspect and I guess we need to encourage one another to persevere. We want those kids to be real church family members now as they will be the core church family of the future, God willing.

This subject is ripe for future polls, so watch out for more once the summer hols are over and my thinking head is less distracted by screaming kids beating each other up. We like to set a good model of Christian family life here in the Vicarage.

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The Queen, Enterprise and the Back Leg of a Goat

Posted in Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 17 May, 2010| 2 Comments »

As regular readers will know, on this blog I refer to my 8 year old daughter as the Queen. This originated when she played the Red Queen in a school performance of Alice in Wonderland. She was particularly good at shouting:

Off with her head!

She also has bossy tendencies. Can’t think where she got those from.

Anyway, the Queen’s organising and enterprising streak appeared in force a couple of weekends ago when she and four friends appeared in a ‘fashion show’ at the end of our monthly church coffee morning. The Queen and her pals have spent the last few months dressing up every time they get together.

The Queen, the Joker and friends looking fashionable

After reading a Christian kids’ book called ‘The Back Leg of a Goat‘ by Penny Reeve, where the heroine puts on a fashion show to raise money to buy a goat for a family in Africa, the Queen decided that she and her friends would do the same. So they put together their dressing clothes and also an old duvet and some other old outfits, liberally snipped about. The Joker was recruited to play some ‘jazz’ (actually some mellow acid jazz cds from the Vicarage collection).

They recruited kind neighbour Beauty, who knows everything about makeup and nails. Beauty came and preened them all up and the event was ready. We arranged for them to put on the show at the end of the monthly church coffee morning, so they had a captive audience. The Queen had worked hard at getting her Kids Klub leaders and other adult friends to come along. They’d made posters and flyers which they’d handed out.

The Queen and her friends enjoyed themselves  enormously as they paraded around the hall, although I don’t think I’d say that the fashion was ready for showing alongside the next Valentino collection. And with the help of the coffee morning bric-a-brac stall they cajoled over £60 from their audience. We are going to send off the money to the Barnabas Fund, for their education fund. The Queen and her friends wanted the money to go towards educating ‘poor children’.

I just hope that I can now throw out all the snipped up clothing and retrieve a small part of our very messy Vicarage…

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Reading Rules

Posted in Kids, tagged , , , , on 10 March, 2010| 5 Comments »

I am currently spending two mornings a week in our church school, reading with some children who need a bit of extra help. I’m having lots of fun with youngsters who are keen to learn and love to read stories.  This Jessica Hagy card from her wonderful website sums up what I’m seeing in practice:

I wish I could spend more time reading with them

I had a chat with a dad recently who was asking about tutors for his young son, who’s in Reception with the Engineer. I was surprised that he thought he needed a tutor. But it was because dad works long hours, and mum (who also works long hours) doesn’t speak English and Granny, who does after-school care, speaks limited English and cannot read or write in any language.

I was impressed with dad’s determination, but so sad that noone who could read simple English was available to spend just ten minutes a day reading with the child. I can’t read with all the children in the parish!

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Learning to use the Tube

Posted in Family, Fun, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 22 February, 2010| 4 Comments »

It's amazing how much fun an underground train journey can be

That’s how we spent our half term holiday: learning to use the Tube. Well, we did a few other things as well, but when the Joker told people about what we’d been up to, the Tube featured rather heavily in his report.

My mother is a Super-Organised Nanna and we’d agreed to go and stay with her and Grumpy Grandpa in London for a few days. The Vicar managed to break away from his sermon prep long enough to spend some of the time with us aswell.

S-O Nanna had comprehensively surfed the net to work out the best things to do with an 8 year old, a 7 year old and a 5 year old in London during half term. So we had a trip to the Science Museum, a visit to the Tower of London and finally an activity morning at the Museum of Childhood.

Of course we visited all these places by tube, which, when you’re under ten and don’t have to do it all the time, is a wonderful treat. This is the first year we’ve been able to do this sort of visit because the Engineer is only just out of the buggy and not whining all the time he has to walk.

The Science Museum trip was the least successful, even though the Vicar was able to come on that one. Even though we were at South Kensington tube station by about 10.45am, there was already a queue to get in. And after we’d had our picnic lunch by the interactive section we would have had to queue again for around 45 minutes to get into the part with all the buttons. The children enjoyed it, but it was really too busy. I think we’d only return there on a school Inset day, when not quite the whole world is trying to visit. Apparently the Natural History museum is similarly heaving during half term. But it is free.

Our favourite part of the Science Museum was probably a story time session, where one of the staff told an interactive story about a visit to Iceland. Her story taught the children about snow, ice and volcanoes, using actions and a white parachute. It was most suitable for younger children although I think the Queen probably enjoyed it the most – she loves drama. Ooh – and we bumped into some old pals from Vicar college. We’d not seen them for nearly five years. London’s a small place. Or Vicars and their families like to do free things in half term.

More on the Tower and the Museum of Childhood another day. Wish we had similar stuff on in our town tho’. I’m thinking The Public could learn a thing or two…

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Babies and Bibles – where to begin?

Posted in Bible study, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 10 February, 2010| 6 Comments »

Stuff that I have to think about hard doesn’t often make it onto the blog. I’m busy. And lazy. So despite my best intentions, my reviews of children’s bibles, about which I think I have a bit to say, are so far limited to one. And anyone who reads my Twitter stream would probably deduce that if I can’t clear mould from my windows, other stuff doesn’t always get done either.

Despite my general ineptitude, those excellent people at the Good Book Company still somehow thought that I might be a suitable person to review their newest bible study booklet. I’ve already had it a couple of weeks and wanted to share my enthusiasm for it with you.

They have come up with a great addition to the range. It’s called Beginning with God and is subtitled ‘Exploring the Bible with your child’ and ‘Bible discovery for pre-schoolers’. The colourful cover invites you to ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ and inside are 29 studies from Genesis and the gospels.

I haven’t test driven the studies in the Vicarage (the Urban Pastor, has though). The Engineer is already reading for himself but I really wish we’d had this book a few years ago. I reckon you could start using it as soon as your child can sit up and take notice. Once your child can look at the pictures in a children’s bible, this book would be a very useful addition to the parent’s bible armour.

Beginning with God is designed for use with the Beginner’s Bible (which must be only children’s bible NOT in the Vicarage library). But it’s based so simply on well known bible stories that I think you’d get by with whichever one you already have.

Each study page is crammed with information, and can seem a little overwhelming at first glance. But after taking my time to read them through I became excited by the format, especially the many practical suggestions about prayer and making the bible story relevant throughout the day.

The studies are broken into appetisers, a main course and a snack for the journey. The appetiser menu is a great list of ideas of things you can chat about or do in introduction to your bible time. The main course includes prayer suggestions, a simple summary of the main truth learnt from the bible story and some great questions to ask your child. The snack is an idea you can carry with you through the day to continue the conversation about the bible reading.

It's sometimes hard to know where to start

The Vicar and I tried to do most of these things when the children were young, but it was so hard to know where to start, especially with the Queen, who was first. Neither of us had been brought up reading the bible regularly so we didn’t have a clue and bumbled along asking everyone we knew for their suggestions. This book would have been brilliant for us. And having run a 2-3s creche, I also think this book would be a great resource in a small church for the littlest kids group.

The book is also packed with bonus extras – stickers (the delight of every small child), craft ideas, tips on prayer and a cut-out-and-keep sheet of ‘snacks’ that you can shove in your pocket or handbag, to remind you to keep talking about God throughout the day. At £5 it’s quite expensive, but littlies love repetition – you could use this a good few times until the kids notice!

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Colin in the UK

Posted in Kids, tagged , , , on 21 January, 2010| 4 Comments »

As you may know, we in the Vicarage are massive fans of the Australian kids’ Christian singer and all-round-fun-guy Colin Buchanan. He’s coming to the UK this March and his tour details have just got themselves their own website.

His shows are full of high energy fun – like an edition of Tiswas, with Christian songs and bible memory rhymes and loads of jokes. His music is varied and interesting – not the naff pap you often get with songs designed for kids. The shows would be most suitable for kids aged 12 and under but we grown-ups love them too. Come with money for the cds, dvds and books you’ll want to buy afterwards.

Edit: The Good Book Company have Twittered me since I wrote the post with a link to their site where you can get Colin’s stuff before March comes along. It’s even better when you know the songs and can sing along!

A great afternoon for all the family

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The Queen’s Carol – Once in Royal David’s City

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on 20 December, 2009| 2 Comments »

The Queen sang the first verse of a carol at our candlelit service tonight. I hope you enjoy her singing. Thankfully I managed to edit out the second verse which had her mother joining in.

Incidentally, how does anyone record decent videos in the dark? I couldn’t see a thing through the viewfinder, so apologies for the shocking camera angles and especially for chopping her head off for half the recording.

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Where the Wild Things are: Best Version

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 11 December, 2009| Leave a Comment »

No, this isn’t a review of the new movie, released in the UK today. The film has had a pretty mixed reaction and took a good while to reach this country after its US release. So I reckon you’re far better off just watching the Joker reciting the whole of the book, with dramatic actions (I particularly like ‘rolled their terrible eyes’) and a wavering Black Country accent. Some of you may have seen this before (all good bloggers recycle material, don’t they?).

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Prayer Tonic

Posted in Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , on 19 November, 2009| 4 Comments »

Last weekend I met up with some old friends. I see this group of Christian girls twice a year, as we’ve done for more than 15 years. We pray for one another through the year and meet for encouragement, to study the bible and eat fabulous food.

This Saturday we’d agreed to read Richard Coekin’s new book ‘Our Father – Enjoying God in Prayer’. What a tonic.

Richard Coekin describes himself in this book as an activist who struggles to pray. I could relate to this very well. I’m a massive extrovert who finds the discipline of prayer a daily battle. But Coekin’s book doesn’t send the activist on a guilt trip. As we discussed it on Saturday, we agreed that we’d not felt beaten over the head about our lack of prayer, but that prayer was in fact possible. And not just in special ‘quiet times’ but throughout the day. We each felt that we could pray more – that it wasn’t as hard as we thought.

One helpful feature of the book is a rather cheesy story at the end of each chapter. The stories fit together as a whole, telling a tale of the prayer lives of different characters. I particularly liked the way one girl’s prayers were written out including lots of ‘ers’. My prayers are far from coherent, so this seemed very realistic.

The book unpacks each of the sections of the Lord’s Prayer and just helps you to think how you could pray that more thoroughly. Since this weekend I’ve been praying this way not only myself, but also with the kids (who are 8, 6 and 4) after their bible time.

With the kids I’ve offered options, so that they feel like they have some choice in the way they pray. The current options are the Lord’s Prayer (unpacked for the big two, but straight for the Engineer) or the five finger prayer. If you’ve not heard of it, the five finger prayer is where we pray

  1. Thumb – for those closest to us (family, friends)
  2. Forefinger – for those who point us to Christ (church leaders, Sunday school teachers)
  3. Middle finger – for those in authority (government, teachers)
  4. Ring finger – for those who are weak (the ill and sad)
  5. Little finger – little me

Actually, we’ve slightly adapted this five finger prayer to pray about the Lord, who’s first, as well as those close to us, as we pray the thumb prayer.

This has been a good week for prayer in the Vicarage. How do you pray with your kids?

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