You might also want to check out and sign up to receive the digital Advent Calendar from Thriving Family. (see below). Remember also, to download the Thriving Family free magazine with great ideas and content for families. (more)
Just as a quick update on Advent Calendars following our highlight of the Friends and Heroes online advent calendar (here) ... check out the Advent Calendar apps listed in our Family blog here.
You might also want to check out and sign up to receive the digital Advent Calendar from Thriving Family. (see below). Remember also, to download the Thriving Family free magazine with great ideas and content for families. (more)
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While we all accept the need to keep current in our ministry, we also acknowledge the difficulty of finding and reading quality content and the costs of magazine subscriptions and books. So... you'll be pleased to know that there are ministry magazines available to download in-app to your iPad/Smartphone. Thriving Family (Focus on the Family) provides a free magazine download with content covering family stages, media reviews, ideas for including family faith into your busy life, devotions, family living articles and more. Read it yourself and encourage families to download and read these family articles and features, too. It might be helpful to note, too, that a free weekly family newsletter is available to download and print off for families in your church. It's a single-page parenting tool that includes a family devotion and brief parenting insight. Check out the sample page below. Further issues are available from their site.. here. HomeFront (David C. Cook) is another free downloadable magazine app that you may like to consider. Download and read the magazine or look through the listed resources- Environment, God's Word, Food and Fun, Traditions, Storytelling and more. Then choose 2 or 3 ideas to incorporate into your family times during the week. You'll find conversation starters, recipes and activities for different age groups. Group Publishing has produced a digital version of their Children's Ministry Magazine that is available via app download. A sample issue is provided at no cost but a subscription can be purchased in-app: $2.99 per issue or an annual subscription $11.99. It's a low-cost, excellent way to keep up-to-date with all the news, reviews and trends in children's ministry through the easy access of your iPad.
Do you ever have those moments when you've finished your lesson program, big church is still going, and the kids are growing restless and unsettled? Don't panic! Talk Starters from Group is an iPhone or iPad app that encourages kids to actively open up and discuss fun topics like 'What do you think heaven is like?' or 'Would you rather be Daniel facing hungry lions or David facing an angry Goliath?' You can choose to display questions sequentially or randomly. Hand the iPad or iPhone to a child to shake for the discussion question. Once the question is read, everyone can be involved in answering and discussing the topic before progressing to the next question. If you have more space or require an activity with more energy, try Group's Throw and Tell Attention-Grabber Ball. This works in a similar fashion but questions are chosen by throwing the ball to each other until told to stop. Then read the question closest to the child's right or left thumb (or whatever you decide to use.) Empowering Kids Inc has produced Kids Table Topics to Go, a box of interesting questions for kids to generate discussions in groups, during lessons or at the table. Questions such as 'What would be a good flavour for toothpaste? and 'What's your favourite board game?' really starts kids talking. My grandchildren are still discussing the 'If you could be a superhero which special power would you choose?' question. Check them out and keep these helpful talk starters handy for those unexpected moments when you need to extend your lesson or just for fun! September school holidays.. beautiful, warm, sunny days... and so many families away on holidays... Many churches opt for no kidz church program over this holiday break, and indeed, many leaders feel tired and stretched to the limit by the end of third term and really appreciate a break. If you have decided to continue presenting a children's program over the holiday period, you may find yourself with a smaller number of volunteers available to assist. With so many families taking advantage of the beautiful weather to go away, you may also have smaller classes on Sunday. Then again, the holiday period may bring holidaying families along to your church on Sunday. So... what sort of activities can you include in your program that will mean easy preparation, needs few volunteers and can be easily customised for any number of children? Here are a couple of ideas that can be used in conjunction with any Bible story presentation and can be used with any sized group. 1. Create a wall mural of your Bible lesson. Simply pin large sheets of paper on the wall. If you have a large number of kids, divide them into groups with specific scenes of the story to create. If you only have a handful of children, they can work togther on the wall mural. If you're really adventurous, they can use paints. And, to be perfectly honest, kids love painting wall murals and signing their name with their handprint. If not, use crayons or even chalks for a different effect. 2. Guess who. Create life-sized characters from your Bible lesson. Again, you’ll need large sheets of paper. Kids can work in pairs to trace around each other onto a large sheet of paper. Then each child can turn their silhouette into one of the characters from your lesson. After they are completed and cut out, attach them to the wall and see who can guess which characters have been created. 3. Drama activity. You may need to gather a few props for this activity, but kids love it. Give each child a particular character, or maybe they can be part of a crowd of onlookers, and ask them to act out the Bible lesson. You can extend it even further by taking pictures of the drama and popping them into a powerpoint presentation.. more work but a lot of fun and a great way to review the lesson. 4.Create a comic strip of the lesson. This one is really no-prep, other than cutting up some strips of paper for each child. Then they can create a comic strip of the lesson. Now, if you only have a small number of kids, and access to computers or iPads the kids can create their comic stories using technology. Bitstrips website allows you a free 60 day account- plenty of time to create some wonderful comic-book style Bible stories with the kids. If you wish to continue using this online program, it costs $10/month. There are a couple of apps that will produce comics, too. Strip Designer, Comic Strip and Pop Dot Comics use your photos to create the images so you’d need to have some photos ready to use or take some of the kids acting out the story to include. Zoodle Comics uses your drawings to create the comic, and the kids will love doing that! Another app is Toontastic and this app provides backgrounds, posable characters and allows the story to be recorded while the characters move. It can then be played as an animated comic- great fun! The kids will really get into it. 5.You may be going away yourself, these holidays, and need a simple activity for someone who is filling in for you. Simple- print off this basic book jacket handout. (See below) The kids can design their own book cover for the Bible story and include the Bible point and reference. They can even provide a summary of the story on the back of the book jacket. Enjoy these September holidays!
How many times do you hear, 'That's not fair!' when working with kids during activities and especially games when kids all want to be selected for a turn. This app will help. Add your kids names to the Pick Me app beforehand. You can add the names according to the groups you're running eg Sunday morning Kidz Church, mid-week kids club and more. Then, simply click 'start'. Choose the group that you're working with and then click 'Pick'. A name will be selected at random. The app can also randomly form teams of your kids if needed- just choose the number of kids in each team. It can also provide team names for you like Seasick squirrels, Risky Raptors, Slithering Serpents and more.. Check it out and let this app stop any complaints! We have found more and more reasons to use iPads in children's ministries especially for our after-school tutoring program, (one of the ways that we seek to reach out and impact our community.) So, I have increasingly felt the need to find iPad covers that will provide added protection for these iPads. Perhaps you have discovered a similar need. I've looked at a few options and eventually purchased these iGuys. These fun, foamy kid-friendly iPad cases are great! You'll find them on speckproducts.com and ..' you won't find a happier, more lovable iPad case anywhere!' They will also fit the first version iPads which was a big plus for me, since we bought a couple of those versions when they dropped in price on ebay. And.. the kids love them! You might like to check out Big Grips for iPad, too. They produce a protective iPad case made especially for kids. It's big, squishy, easy to grab, comfortable to hold and very grip-able. They come with a stand, too, as an added extra. I thought it might be helpful to list some of the Christmas apps available, little realising just how many I would need to sift through. So here is a small list to get you started.. * Bethlehem the Beginning Advent Calendar- includes characters from the interactive Bethlehem the Beginning book and includes verses and songs. *Children's Bible Advent Calendar 2011- behind each window you'll find an illustrations of the birth of Christ and a Bible quote. *Nativity Stickers Book- interactive sticker book, choose stickers, place on backgrounds * Bethlehem the Beginning Book- the story of the birth of Christ as told by the animals, 'read to me' narration, full songs, interactive animations. * Christmas Nativity Scene 3D- beautiful virtual diorama of the nativity scene, interactive, tap on elements to listen to audio samples * The Bethlehem Nativity- create your own nativity scene, sound effects, story narrated with carols, create your own Christmas card * The First Christmas HD- interactive storybook with rhyming storyline for young pre-readers * The Bethlehem Story- read and record * Christmas Countdown- counts down the days, minutes and seconds you need to wait * Yummy Christmas- involve kids in Christmas cooking with easy, child-friendly recipes For a bit of fun.... * Christmas Tree Decorator- create your own tree with candy canes, iciles, coloured lights and more. Also counts down the days until Christmas * The Flakery- create your own snowflake and watch a flurry of your snowflake creations. *Christmas Fire- watch and listen to the crackling fire and Christmas music *Holiday Scape- allows you to take a photo of your house and then decorate it * SnowGlobe- experience a virtual winter wonderland, choose from built-in scenes or use one of your own photos. *Christmas- countdown, advent calendar, wallpapers and gift list * Christmas Photo Editor- allows you to add Christmas effects to your photos and create Christmas frames Hope you enjoy these Christmas apps... Simply and easily create online event registrations for your events, whether for 10 children or 1000, when you use Eventbrite or Eventarc. Both of these online programs are FREE for free events and, for those with an attendance cost, will allow registrations and tickets to be purchased online for a minimal fee. Eventarc (an Australian company) also has Donations & Merchandise modules also well as Sponsorship pages. In less than 30 minutes, you can set up your event with all your details, add your logo and graphics and include location information with a Google map. Add the registration link to your website or include it in an email and spread the word easily using the social media links within the program. Eventbrite also provides special email invitations to be issued and once registered, email reminders or followup emails can be sent. Add countdown buttons and event calendars to your site to further promote your event. Sign-in sheets and name badges can be printed from the program ready for your event. Both of these programs have a free iPhone app which allows you to scan tickets for attendance, monitor attendee numbers, and access sales and financial reports. Eventbrite allows you set an event as repeating with a click in a box while Eventarc events are set as repeating by copying the event for different dates. This means that you can use the programs for Sunday morning programs, allowing parents to register their children either from home or using check-in stations in the foyer or using mobile devices. Pretty versatile? As the end-of-year activities hover on the horizon, it might be worth a bit of time to check out the potential of these programs. Check out the overview of the Eventarc program here Last month, we highlighted communication with church families and the community and reviewed 'SmileBox', a program that turns your photos into memories to share with others.( See here for more details .) The simple, downloadable program provides templates that let you quickly and easily create slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, scrapbooks and photo albums of your children's ministry activities or upcoming events. Share on Facebook, email, blog, website, burn to dvd or print. And now, they have produced a new iPhone app so you can share your moments on the go as well. Although not as extensive as the full program, it does mean that you can take your photos, add embellishments and email in a matter of minutes. Plus you'll receive a copy via email link that you can insert into your webpage or blog.... Easy. |
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