Esther Cycle

WorkshopCycles includes Esther as a cycle. This wouldn't fall into my top-50 Bible Stories of all times, but they've got a cycle ready to go, so we're using it!

Week 1 was the Art cycle, and kids made noisemakers out of empty water bottles. I wish I'd gotten a photo of some of the kids and their creations, but we'll just have to deal with this.
1) Start with an empty water bottle:

2) Add beans, rice, rocks or anything that will make a good shaking noise. Screw the lid on (put a bit of glue on it if you want to make it permanent).
3) Decorate! We chose to decorate them as people. I cut up a few old polo shirts and sewed them into covers with arms and legs, then the kids added decoration.
4) Add a head--you may use a styrofoam ball, or we used quick-dry clay
5) USE! As the Esther story is re-told, shake your noisemakers to drown out every time the name "Haman" is said.

Our other workshops for this cycle include:
-Computer activity
-Purim Drama
-Games (red light/green light, rock paper scissors, etc)
-Kitchen: making Hammentaschen for coffee hour

The Beatitudes Cycle

Harcourt Parish Recently completed our WorkshopCycle on the Beatitudes.

Our activities included: Making a Blessing Cup out of quick-dry clay, Computer and Movie workshops (always a hit), fun with the Doxology, and making Blessing Cookies for coffee hour (like fortune cookies, but with blessings inside).

Presenting: John the Baptist!

This year we ordered our Children's Pageant from Creative Communications. It was a pageant mainly about John the Baptist (and thus helped my High Church side be comfortable that we presented on on Advent 4!).
The pageant was simple, very elastic (easily changed to work for a smaller or larger group), and inexpensive. We would happily purchase something from them again.

Here is Zachariah and Elizabeth being introduced:


Although it was a Children's Pageant, we did also use some adult actors. Here's our daddy holy trinity of John, Gabriel, and Zachariah:



And here are the children performing their "Big Number:"

John the Baptist: Science

I hope to add more Science Workshops into our program. This was our first one, focusing on "arise, shine for your light has come."

In this Workshop, the Leader put together solutions with different chemicals that create different colors of flame. Here, you can see the bottles of solution, and the children with their long wooden qtips:


The children listen as the Leader explains how there are many different colors of flame, but they all possess attributes of heat and light. Just like each one of us have our own unique gifts, but all those gifts can be ways for us to show God's love to others:

Prep for John the Baptist

I'm preparing for our long-advent WorkshopCycle on "A Voice in the Wilderness: John the Baptist."

The Story Cycle teaches the children to tell the story of John's life using a variety of stickers, which I purchased here.

And I didn't like the suggested Kitchen Cycle, so am writing my own which will include offering the children to task real honeycomb and bugs. Did you know you could buy edible bugs at Amazon.com?!?

CROP Walk

Harcourt Parish has completed our CROP Walk Cycle and it went very well. The granola bars from the Kitchen Workshop were a great success both at coffee hour and with the walkers. The signs the children made decorated the sanctuary for several weeks, and then some signs were taken to the walk itself.

It was fun to see how much of the 5-mile walk our young children could do. I think our family made it about 3 1/2 miles. Not bad for our first time without strollers. Here, you see that Luke (age 2) had more energy than Ella (age 6):


And here's many of our walkers with our altar party and signs right after church:

CROP Cycle and Children's Choir

Last Sunday was our first week of Children's Choir. We had a FANTASTIC turnout. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves--and the catchy tune hasn't left my head all week. (AKK!)
They will be singing for the congregation on Children's Sabbath Sunday, October 19th.


The Gradeschool classroom is currently doing a Cycle on CROP Walk. I created this cycle myself, so e-mail me if you'd like the lesson plans. The cycles include:
Movie (CROP Walk Video)
Art (Making signs and banners for the walk)
Drama and Music (older children rehearse a short play, younger children create a song)
Kitchen (making energy bars for the walkers).

Shameless Plug: To donate to CROP to help stop hunger around the world, just click here.