OK, a backtrack to what we did last month at Alive@5, and then a couple from last year that I didn't write up. The Theme was "Caring for Creation" ie. stewardship. It went something like this.
Arrival Activity - Mime/Charades Bingo. People were given a sheet and had to get other people to mime the item in each square. Designed as a "Getting to Know You": GTKY activity. I'll post the details.
Song - "God Made Today" -a golden oldie from camp
Prayer of Thanks – “What happened over the holidays that you’d like to give thanks for? What are you thankful for about this new year? People call out responses, after which we all say “Thanks God for all your gifts”
Bible Story – Genesis Chapter 1 – accompanied by on-screen images and music. We handed out the story (CEV version) for various people to read. The CEV has a line repeated several times "And that's what heppened" so we made that a group responses for most of the verses. This was accompanied by a bunch of spectactular images from National Geographic and the track "Happiness" from thw album "Riceboy Sleeps" by Jonsi and Alex.
Storybook - "Wonderful Earth" by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen, which has this great popup amone other things..
Theme comment - we generally have a brief reflection on the theme. We used a video clip of an airline steward here. Still not sure if that was a good idea or not.
(There was supposed to be a prayer activity here but a certain person forgot it...)
Activities
- Act It! - Make up a puppet play about caring for one another
- Paint It! - Share in painting a large mural of caring for Creation
- Play It! - balloon game4s that required people to be protective
Show and Tell - We always have a brief plenary time in which we invite people to share what happened in the activities
Song - we've been finishing with the same song each month "Thank you God (Father) for Everything"
Blessing - we write a different blessing to say together each month, related to the theme
God has blessed us
with every good thing
May we be God’s blessing to the earth
May we bless the flowers and trees
May we bless the birds and animals
May we bless the rivers and seas
May we be a blessing
to each person we meet
May we know we are blessed
by God each day
Comments