Cross Movement Kids: Down and Dirty With Jesus

We've been doing a summer Tuesday morning program a few times this summer. Our theme verse is 1 Corinthians 2:9, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind could ever know what God has prepared for those who love him." We've been doing crazy bible stories and fun games. This week was down and dirty with Jesus.

Preparation: Buy 21 pounds of pudding (at least), relish, ketchup, dishwashing soap, two tarps, some buckets, gummy worms, and the game Twister. Set the tarps down on a grassy area near a hose. We put pool noodles on the sides to make a playing field. Put twister near it, and spray ketchup on the red spaces, relish on the green, dishwashing soap on the blue, and pudding on the yellow. Also, put six gummy worms at the bottom of two of the bowls, and put a generous amount of pudding on top. Tell parents kids need to wear clothes that can get messy, and that they need to bring a change of clothes and a towel.

Lesson: We read the story of when Jesus put mud on the blind man's eyes. We talked about how sometimes people feel like because they did something bad, that's why bad things happen, but how that's not the case. God often uses the bad things to show his glory. We talked about how Jesus used the dirtiest thing (mud!) to make us clean. The kids all got a scoop of pudding and spread it on their faces, just like the blind man. We talked about how nobody but Jesus could make a blind man see, and how God is powerful and he uses even gross stuff for his glory--and a lot of time, it's the gross stuff that makes us see his glory even more! Then we went outside and got GROSS!

Activity #1: Dirty Twister. We had all the kids gather round and played Twister. The fun part of this game was all of the gross things the kids stepped in. When they fell, they fell in lots of fun liquids.

Activity #2: Bobbing for Gummy Worms. We separated the kids into two teams. One at a time they went up and bobbed for one gummy worm. Once they got it, the next person went. The object was to be the first team to do this.

Activity #3: We put pudding in a pie tin. The same groups had to go one at a time and transfer the pudding to a cup.

Activity #4: We poured the remaining pudding on the big tarps (they made a playing field) and some soap and water, as well, and played Front of the Boat, Back of the Boat. One side is the front, one side is the back. The kids have to run from front to back (depending on what you call). The last person there is out. You can also call "Cockroach!" which is where they have to get on their back and flail their arms and legs, "Fish out of water" which is where they get on their stomach and do the same thing (we poured water on them during this time! they loved it!), "marshmallow" which is where they hug their knees to their chest, "Captains Coming!" which is where they salute, and "at ease" which is where they stop saluting. After captains coming, they cant move until someone says at ease. If they do anything wrong or are the last person to do something, they're out. They got soooo messy!

Activity #5: Duck Duck Goose. In pudding and soapy water and grossness.

Activity #6: Human Bowling. We had the kids sit in marshmallow position on one end of the tarp. Then one person would bowl by sliding down the tarp and into the other kids trying to knock them over. They LOVED this game.

Activity #7: Freeze Dance!

Activity #8: Freeze Tag!

Activity #9: We had a coolest hair competition with hair gel, pudding, ketchup, whatever the kids could find!

By this time the kids were really dirty and ready to clean off. We hosed them down, played a few more rounds of duck duck goose on a soap and water tarp, then hosed them off again. We brought the parachute outside and played games with the parachute for about ten minutes before the parents came to pick up their dirty children!

Tip: Review what we talked about again at the end of the day. We didn't do this, and I wish we had. We could have reinforced how much cleaner the kids felt after they'd been through the mess and then been washed off. How Jesus does the same for us. What a gospel presentation this could have been! Hindsight is 20/20.

Joshua, Rahab, and Jericho

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." - Joshua 24:15

We only had three kids tonight, but most of the lesson could be taken and used with more than that. Our church was on a trip to Guatemala, and we had some VBSes going on in grandparents' churches, so we were short many a child. Either way, it was a great night, and one of those where there was very little planning on my part, but God showed up! I actually didn't know what we were doing until I got to Walmart to buy supplies (ten minutes beforehand), and only did this story because a little boy in the group asked for it!

Preparation: Before the lesson, I bought little wooden planks (about the size of a bookmark), some magnetic backing, and some stone spraypaint (about ten bucks total, for enough to make six). I spraypainted each of the wooden planks and let them dry during the lesson.

Warm Up: The kids came in, and I asked them if they'd ever read the book "Three Little Pigs". Of course, they all had. We talked about what the three pigs did, and what they built their houses out of (straw, sticks, and stone), and how the big bad wolf came and blew down the first two, but not the stone one, because it was sturdy. We talked about how it's sturdiness made a big difference! Then we did a quick overview of Moses, and how Joshua was the next leader of the Israelites, after Moses died. And how Joshua had to defeat Jericho to get to the promised land.

Lesson: We read snippets of Joshua 2. Basically, the kids got the following story: Joshua sent two people into Jericho to check out the city. They knocked on a sinner, Rahab's, door. She hid them. Other people in the town saw and told the King. The King and everyone in the town were already afraid of the Israelites, so they sent some people to question Rahab. Rahab hid the men upstairs in the attic, but told everyone else they had left. Then she went up and told the men she knew that their God was the true God. They told her they would keep her safe when the walls came crumbling down. She let them out, and remembered their promise.

Interactive Lesson: Then we pulled up a barstool and made a pyramid of paper cups on top of it. We talked about how Joshua heard from God he had to march around the city 6 straight days without making a peep. We talked about how the walls were really really strong, and how the whole city was surrounded by walls that made up houses, and one of those houses was Rahab's. Then we marched around the barstool. Each rotation I asked one of the kids if they wanted to try and scream the wall down yet, and each time they said no. On the seventh time, we all screamed at the paper cups. They moved a bit, but didn't fall until I breathed on them. Then they came crumbling down! The kids were amazed! We put the cups back up and in a circle, and talked about how what really happened was all but one fell, and we flicked all of the cups but one off. We talked about how Rahab's house stood because she knew God and loved God and followed him.

Activity #1: After this, we posed the question, "how can you make your house a house that serves the Lord and is sturdy?" The kids answered with pray, read the bible, put crosses up, follow God, etc. Then, we gave the kids some chairs, piano benches, a coat rack, etc., and a parachute, and told them they had five minutes to make a fort. Kids LOVED this. My helper and I were going to try and destroy their fort (they had to be inside it) with gator balls. All along, my helper was instructed NOT to harm the fort if they were praying, reading the bible, etc inside, only if they were just sitting. The first time, they just sat, and they got RANSACKED. (they loved being destroyed while under the tent!) Then we took them out, gave them another shot, and told them to think about what makes a house sturdy. They weren't quite there yet, so this time they put books to hold things down, and tried to make the structure more sturdy. RANSACKED again. So, we brought the kids closer, and I asked them again what kinds of houses stand firm. The house of the Lord! How can their houses be sturdy? Pray, read the bible, etc. We hinted enough at them that one of the girls got the hint. They built the fort, and it was really cool because she was very adamant on them not making it structurally supported. At one point, one of the kids tried to suggest another way that would have worked wonders, and she said, "we don't need that! we've got God!" This time, they took their bibles in the tent with them. When my helper and I approached, we could hear them praying and reading the bible. We threw the balls, but purposely threw them so they wouldn't put a dent in the tent at all. My helper and I played up that we didn't understand how their tent wasn't falling down. Then we crawled under and asked the kids why their fort stayed strong. All of them answered GOD.

Bible Verse Memorization: After this, we made bible verse cards. We took the stone-painted wooden planks (which were dry now) and wrote in black sharpie the memory verse ("As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." -Joshua 24:15) and put magnetic backing on it. We instructed the kids to put it somewhere their whole family could see it and to implement some of the ways we'd talked about to make their houses strong for the Lord. Then we put the bible verse planks (which looked like bricks, to remind them!) up, and played another game.

Activity #2: We made a strange variation of freeze tag. We all played (which put five of us playing) and one person was IT. We gave this person a gator ball. It was just like freeze tag, except IT tried to throw the ball and peg people for them to be frozen. When someone was frozen they put both arms out like the side of a house. Someone else had to come up and put the rest of the house up with their arms, and the two had to recite the verse, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!" Then that person was unfrozen. The timing was perfect! By the time the person was unfrozen, IT had just found the ball and managed to peg someone new. We never had everyone frozen at one time. I think if we'd played without the ball, though, we would have not had so much fun!

At this point, the parents came. All the kids knew the bible verse like the front of their hands, and I felt it was a great lesson they enjoyed! Praise God!

PSK #2: Prayers of Blessing

Week two happened to fall the week before a great mission trip our church is going on to Guatemala. There couldn't have been a better week to do blessing!

We started out with some parachute games, and a few other running around games as our lesson was shorter this time. Then we opened our bibles to James 3:5-6, 9-10. We talked about how we can either build people up or destroy them by how we talk, and how we've all been hurt or uplifted by other people's talking about or to us. Then we had the kids define blessing and cursing in their own words, before giving them the following definition:

blessing - anything that you wish upon someone that builds them up and causes them to grow.

cursing - anything that you wish upon someone that causes them to fall, or would hurt their feelings if they knew.

We talked about how all throughout the bible, God gives blessings on people, and people give blessings on each other. We talked about Abraham, and Mary, and Adam, and how their blessings came true, and how blessings made in God's name ALWAYS come true.

Activity #1: I brought paint chips, 2 8x10 black frames, and some sharpies, and two pieces of construction paper. The kids each wrote a message for the people going on the trip to Guatemala on the paint chip (a blessing), and then another blessing for the people in Guatemala who will be blessed by our team. We made a collage on the construction paper with the paint chips, then put them in the frames. Each kid gathered around and placed their hands on a photo frame as we war-prayed (everyone praying out loud, at the same time) for the Guatemala trip. The kids LOVED the war praying!

Activity #2: While all of the above was going on, I pulled one child aside at a time and blessed them in the name of the Lord. I said a quick prayer of thanks for the children and their special gifts before hand, and then blessed them each to go be warriors for Christ in their own special way, ending in the Numbers blessing, "May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face shine upon you and give you peace."

We then played human foosball until it was time to leave. We were going to go prayer-walking (walk around the room and bless different things), but parents came early. This wasn't the kids favorite day, but it was still fun!

PSK #1: Praying To Become Who God Wants You To Be

We're starting a new session on prayer. My hope is that our kids will turn into prayer warriors for Christ, and will start to adapt a lifestyle of fervent prayer in their daily lives. I bought the book "Prayer Saturated Kids" at a local Christian bookstore, and will be working through it for the next few weeks.

We opened by reading Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." We asked the kids what they thought it meant to be "set apart." The kids struggled for a bit, but we generally came to the agreement that it meant you were different than every body else. We talked about how God made each of us different, and how we have different purposes because we're different.

Activity #1: Each child wrote their name at the top of a piece of construction paper, then drew a picture under their name. We passed the papers around, and each child wrote one characteristic/trait of the child on the paper (for instance, "nice," "good at praying", "helpful", etc). By the end, each child had about 20 characteristics of their own. Then, we read the passage about how God has appointed some to be pastors or teachers, etc. We talked about the traits of each, and had kids write down which one they thought best applied to them.

Lesson: We read the story of David and Goliath, and talked about how David was set apart to defeat Goliath. We focused in on the point where Saul asks David to put on his armor. When David put it on, it didn't fit, however, when David put on the armor that fit him, he was successful. God made us all different, and we all fit into different armor, and our job is to find that armor and wear it so we can be the best we can be.

Activity #2: All the children took their shoes off and threw them in the center. We separated kids into two teams. Each kid then picked two shoes (neither of which were their own, and they didn't pick a pair). We had them line up, then put on both shoes. They then had to race through an obstacle course. If they lost their shoe, they had to start over again. When the kids were finished, we talked about how it was so much easier to do it with our own shoes, and not shoes that were too small or too big.

Lesson: All the kids came and sat down, and we gave them a short quiz to get them thinking about how God made each of them different. The questions for the quiz were from the book "Prayer Saturated Kids." 1. What do you dream about most? 2. What bible character would you most want to be like and why? 3. What would you be happiest doing as an adult? 4. What's your favorite part of the school day? The worst? 5. What do you think God wants you to do to help others? ... After the kids had written these answers down with their names, I collected them to pray over them in my own time... We then talked more about how God made each of us different for a different purpose, and I asked the kids how we should figure out what that purpose was.

Bringing It Home: We talked about how we have to pray and ask God to show us who he created us to be. And how God would show us that through circumstances, prayer, the Bible, etc. Then, we played some music and had the kids lay down and pray while they listened to the music.

The take-home challenge: We challenged the kids to pray through music throughout the week, and to learn Jeremiah 1:5. We shortened it to, "Before I was born, you knew me and set me apart."