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Posts Tagged ‘Fun’

Advice on Hands in Church

Posted in Church, Fun, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 30 March, 2012| 1 Comment »

The brilliant Tim Hawkins has some advice for those who are unused to the more exuberant type of contemporary worship. I confess that I don’t get much further than ‘Carrying the TV’ myself. I am Anglican, after all…

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An Informal Easter

Posted in Church, Faith, Family, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 28 March, 2012| 1 Comment »

Bee has been here over the last couple of days, helping out with Messy Church last night and with the school Easter service this morning. She and I got together this afternoon to talk about next Thursday, when Cake & Chat becomes DIY Holiday Club. She had some lovely Easter craft ideas and we sourced some others online. We’re going to be making:

I was going to get hold of Baker Ross colour-in cards too, but looking at the list above, I think we’ll have plenty to do.

The crafts will give us good opportunities to chat about Easter with those who attend. Some will be joining us at the Maundy Thursday meal that evening and will be in church on Easter Sunday, but others won’t be at anything official. So we’re very much looking forward to our informal Easter service over cake and crafts.

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Vicarage Kitchen Kit: The Paint Scraper

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 27 March, 2012| 1 Comment »

I have a few favourite gadgets in the Vicarage kitchen. Today I’d like to introduce you to my best pastry-making tool: a paint scraper.

I used to make most of my pastry in my food processor, but I found that it was too easy to blitz it and end up with the fat chopped too small and the pastry too tough. Since I started using the paint scraper (NB I’ve never scraped paint with this one) I’ve been able to ensure that plenty of gravel-sized pieces of butter/lard/hard marg remain. This gives me a lovely flakey shortcrust pastry that seems to go down very well with consumers.

It’s therapeutic to chop the fat into the flour, too – sometimes I imagine that I am chopping junk mail into tiny pieces. And no fat in the fingernails either – my pet hate with pastry-making. So there you are – a cheap and useful gadget that can also be used to remove welded Weetabix from the kitchen table. Every kitchen should have one.

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Whether you’re German or French or Dutch…

Posted in Faith, Family, tagged , , , , , , , on 26 March, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It’s a lovely sunny morning in the parish today. Just the sort of day to learn to pronounce Pentateuch properly ie not to rhyme with Dutch. The complete pronounciation guide is in this smile-inducing song that my kids have been humming from What’s in the Bible 3. The What’s in the Bible series is produced by Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer and has been great for my kids, aged 10, 9 and 7. The 10yo Queen protests that she doesn’t want to watch but is then found wrapped in her snuggle blanket singing along and enjoying the fun format which walks them through the books of the bible. Number 7 in the series is due to be released tomorrow and covers Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

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Bishops Got Talent: Selecting the Next Archbishop?

Posted in Church, Faith, Fun, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 16 March, 2012| 4 Comments »

Since Rowan Williams stepped down this afternoon from the hardest job in the Church of England (or maybe not, parish life is just a microcosm of the Anglican Communion tbh), Twitter has been awash with suggestions of who will succeed him.

It was suggested that rather than the Crown Nominations Commission we could have a Bishops Got Talent show, with possible candidates competing for the post. This leads to the fun possibility of theme weeks:

  • Sermon week
  • Sitting through tedious civic occasions looking interested week
  • Dealing with the media week (including a round of ‘explaining the basics of the Christian faith to most reporters and especially sub-editors’)
  • Eyebrow styling week
  • Mitre modelling week

It also led to speculation about who could be on the panel. They must obviously conform to the required stereotypes of benign expert/stroppy upstart/foxy chick/joker. First suggestions (who do not necessarily have to be alive or real) include:

  • St John
  • Archdeacon Robert (from Rev)
  • Ellie (the Headteacher from Rev)
  • Adrian Plass.

I’d love to hear your ideas for possible rounds and those you have for alternative panel members.

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Easy Chopstix

Posted in Food, Fun, tagged , , , , , , on 6 March, 2012| 4 Comments »

At Christmas, my sister bought some great easy-use chopsticks for the kids. They are joined together at the top so are a good way for kids to learn to eat Chinese food in a fun way and not starve. It’s an excellent way to learn not to drop food on yourself. And you can always use a spoon at the end!

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Possible Solution for Musicianless Churches?

Posted in Church, Fun, tagged , , , , , , on 5 March, 2012| 1 Comment »

A friend recently linked to this excellent video on Facebook and suggested it might be the solution in small churches where musicians are thin on the ground. We’ve been blessed recently by musicians playing in our services and replacing the cds and midi files, but one (Rocky, our Ministry Trainee) is leaving in the summer, so we’re praying for reinforcements. If you know any musicians, or even some helpful robots, do please send them our way…

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Wriggly Reading Kids

Posted in Books, tagged , , , , , , on 1 March, 2012| 6 Comments »

Kids find it hard to sit still at the best of times, but as I read with children at our church school I’ve noticed a few who just can’t keep themselves in a single place when they’re reading aloud, let alone doing it whilst listening to others read or reading to themselves. I liked this illustration of the phenomenon I found recently:[HT: Abraham Piper]

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Runabout Games for Sunday School Kids

Posted in Church, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 28 February, 2012| Leave a Comment »

We normally have about ten kids in our Junior church. Their ages range from 4 to 12, so we have readers and non-readers. We often have some very wriggly childen with us. So as well as creatively teaching the bible through story telling and crafts (we’re currently looking at the life of the prophet Samuel) we try to include a runabout game which reinforces what we’ve been learning.

I reckon that there are three ‘games’ that be readily adapted for any bible story and include some bible reinforcement along with fun and (hopefully) enough physical activity to keep the kids engaged.

Roundabout games can be lots of fun

1. The first game I use is an adaptation of Port Starboard Bow Stern (PSBS). I used to play PSBS when I was in the Girl Guides – you label the ends and sides of the hall and run between the walls and do various actions as commanded by the leader (in PSBS eg ‘Captain’s Coming’ = stand straight and salute).

What I do is adapt PSBS to the bible story. So when we were looking at Samson the other week, we had the kids running from Gaza to the temple, to Delilah’s house and then to the country of the Philistines. They had to stop to scoop honey from the lion or pretend to drink wine. They brought down the temple columns and had their hair cut. I think they all remember the story of Samson pretty well now.

2. A big favourite with the kids is any adaptation of ‘Simon Says’. We might play ‘Samson says’ or even ‘Jesus says’ (cos you should do something if Jesus says it!). And then they can all be encouraged to run around or to do silly actions or some based on the story. Very simple.

3. The other game option I sometimes employ is a relay race with some tangential allusion to the story, but I use these less now, as the first two games are easier to prepare and also give you more opportunity to reinforce the teaching. Also the first two games ensure that all the kids are running all the time and get nicely tired out. And there are not really any winners so everyone stays happy.

How do you help your active Sunday schoolers use up their energy?

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How to get Kids to go on a Walk

Posted in Family, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 29 December, 2011| 4 Comments »

Our technique for this has proved pretty successful of late. We were particularly pleased this holiday when we managed a walk that included one child who has been rather reluctant to walk of late. But when he was told we were going on a Treasure Hunt, he became quite keen.

What we do, of course, is go Geocaching. Which is using our satnav to go hunting for small pieces of plastic treasure (generally cracker gifts) hidden in small boxes in all sorts of locations. There are over 1.6 million geocaches worldwide and 13,062 in the UK on the day I checked. We visited the Clent Hills in Worcestershire where 32 caches have been hidden by enthusiasts. Some of the ones we found were hidden by Girl Guide troops. All you do is join the website (for free), log the GPS location of the caches in your satnav (there are also plenty of apps for mobile devices) and off you go.

Once you find your cache, you exchange a small item you have brought for one in the box, write your name in the log and rehide the box. We found four geocaches yesterday and managed to get the kids on a decent walk round the beautiful landscape and blow away some Christmas cobwebs.

Enthusiastic kids (honestly!) examining a geocache

Other than with our family and friends, the Vicar has also run geocaching sessions with the youth group at church and on our summer camp for 11-14s. As long as they don’t have to walk *too* far, the teens have loved it. It also seems to be popular with other clergy friends, if my Facebook feed is anything to go by. Free entertainment and a way to get the kids out and active, what’s not to like?

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