First Prayer

Nikki made up his first prayer yesterday afternoon:

Thank you Mummy, go to bed. Amen.

I'm not entirely sure what he meant to say... at least he is no longer adamant that you can only say 'amen' at playgroup!

Cannons in Canaan!

Nikki has been enjoying his church stories (as he insists on calling them) but the other night he was rather worried when I was reading about Abram and his journey to Canaan. He kept pointing at the picture with lots of people and going 'boom boom' rather sadly. It took me a while before I caught on - he thought that they were going to cannons and were going to be blown up! Poor baby! He was fine once I explained that they would be safe, and nobody was getting 'cannon-ed'...

Messy Church

Once every couple of months, our village church does a 'Messy Church' craft afternoon for kids. I have never taken Nikki before, as it is not really for toddlers and he simply hasn't been into crafts in the same way. Now that he would rather stick glue on the paper (and not his finger down the glue stick) I thought we would give it a try.

It turned out to be a really fun afternoon. The theme was The Creation, which I felt was appropriate for a first session. There were seven activity stations in the church, one for each day.

At the first station, we removed a sheet of black paper from our poster (the creation of light).
Then, we coloured in sea, earth and sky (the creation of heaven).
The third station supplied us with some trees, flowers and seeds to stick on to the earth.
At the fourth station, we stuck on pictures of the sun, moon and stars.
The fifth station provided stickers of fish.
The sixth day was split between two stations - first we stuck on all sorts of animals and people to our collage. Then we went off to decorate a gingerbread Adam or Eve (there wasn't time or icing enough to decorate two biscuits per child, so it was generally boys making Adams and girls making Eves. Our Adam had green icing legs and rather disproportionate smartie eyes...).
The seventh station had a picture of a bed to stick on (God rested)!

This was all done in a rather manic 30 minutes, followed by a couple of songs and prayers and dinner! It was nothing fancy - sandwiches, sausages, crisps etc. but the children all loved it!

Our "Seven Days of Creation" Poster

Guess which colour crayon Mummy used! We were using a pew as a table, so I made a lovely wood rubbing, too! Nikki did all the blue crayon, most of the stickers and a lot of glue. I suspect most of the picture has traces of glue on it! If we had more time, he would have done all the sticking.

When we got home, I decided it was a really good time to introduce Bible reading. Nikki wasn't interested until I called it a church book. He loves the church and its bells... So, we read the first story in our Children's Bible - The Creation. I might even read him the rest of the book!