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Showing posts from 2015

Christmas comes but once a year (Part four: The Bible, Apps and Storybooks)

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This is the fourth a nd final blog post in our four part series of fabulous Ch ristmas ideas. Click on these links to read the other posts:  1.  Christmas Music 2. Christmas Crafts   3. Christmas Images, Media, Photos and Fonts And this post, is all about The Bible, Bible Apps and Storybooks. The Bible: Modern Day Nazareth Christmas in Israel: I have written a book using the photos I took in Israel in 2011. It is designed for children to read, to give them a glimpse of what the places in the Christmas story look like today. You can download it free from our dropbox folder - click here ! This is a great resource to use with small groups in your church to explore the context of Christmas. Story telling ideas: Christmas Wrapped Up : This is a great resource, packed with story telling ideas, scripts and much more! It is a vaila ble for purchase from Scripture Union: Fre ephone 0508 423 836 Putting actions to the story of the Wise Men: We have a script and act

Ngakuku, Tarore and the Little Book: Book #7

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The second book in The Chronicles of Paki S eries Two is:  Ngakuku, Tarore and the Little Book.  Find out what happened when Chief Ngakuku faced a tragedy and had to decide between revenge and forgiveness.  This programme works well for a holiday programme, afterschool club or your church Children’s Ministry programme. Choose the ideas that work for your children and within the time you have available. Click here to download the ‘Ngakuku and Tarore’ programme.   Here are some extra bits and pieces to go along with the programme: - D ownloadable posters of the karakia and waiata - link   A Photo Journey: Recently I travelled to Matamata and visited the sites where this story happened. I took photographs of my travels which you are free to download and use. Just make sure you credit Scripture Union. These are available as downloadable resources, with photos and information.  Click on this link to dow n load th e photos .  Click here to request high reso

Henry Williams: Book #6

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The first programme in The Chronicles of Paki S eries Two is 'Henry Williams the Peacemaker'. This programme comes as a downloadable booklet that is free and easy to use: Click here to download it from our website. Here are some extra bits and pieces to go along with the programme: - A poster of the karakia on pg 5 of the programme  - link - A poster of the waiata words on pg 7 of the programme - link - A template to create your own Paki puppet - link - Posters of the Four Spiritual Styles - link - A poster of the Punakaiki Prayer layers - link  Websites to check out:  These are the website referenced in the programme material. They are great resources to bookmark and refer to over and over: - The colouring pages on pg 4 of the programme: www.doc.govt.nz - A great games website to check out: Becky's Guiding Resource Centre - The words, video and guitar chords for 'E toru nga mea': www.folksong.org.nz  

The Chronicles of Paki Series Two

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Did you enjoy the first series of The Chronicles of Paki books? Well, GREAT news! The second series has just been published and it is packed full of wonderful stories to share with your church, family and community.  Scripture Union has written another curriculum series to go with these books, suitable for: · Sunday Schools · Afterschool programmes · Holiday programmes The programme is designed for 5—12 year olds, and it comes in five downloadable booklets that are free and easy to use.  They are packed with great ideas to get your tamariki (children) excited about ‘The Chronicles of Paki’ and discover the stories for themselves.  They will help you to dig deeper into how God has been at work in Aotearoa, New Zealand right from the very beginning. Our programme for Series One focused on the use of stations as a way to allow children to explore the stories. You can download it for free from our website. This year we have built this prog

60 000 children...

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How are we doing when it comes to getting to know the children in our local communities? Our research found 60,000 across New Zealand who are involved in activities run in their community by the local church. 40,000 of these children were involved in one-off activities like Light Parties or maybe holiday programmes. The other 20,000 were involved in regular community ministries such as clubs and classes in their local schools or regular after school programmes.  Sixty thousand. That’s the size of Napier! That’s a significant number of children and we can celebrate what we are doing in our communities. The problem is, that while many of these children are attending our programmes, they are not connecting with the churches who are running them. When we asked about those children who have found their way into the life of the church through the church’s community programmes we discovered something sad. 34% of the churches we surveyed had no children join the church as a