Tell Me a Story

Over the last few months I have been taking short online course through Ausburg Press. So far, one of my favorite has been one on Building Biblical literacy. The last 10 or 15 minutes of the course the instructor gave us tangible ways to encourage and promote Biblical Literacy. Some of the tasks can be done at church both during the worship service and during Sunday School. Others activities are intended to be modeled in out everyday lives, such as reading the bible in public, which I mentioned last week. But one that I think is really important is encouraging children to retell bible stories in their own words. In order to retell a story, we must truly know the story, we must internalize the meaning and the important elements. The Christmas Story is one of the best known Bible stories, so I encourage you to ask your child to tell you the story. There are so many ways for them to retell this story! They could:

• draw pictures of different scenes to hold up while they tell you the story
• make a book with their own written text of what happened
• act out the story
• record themselves telling the story and then listen back to it
• write a song that tells the story
• create a dance that highlights the important pieces of the story
• simply tell the story, before they go to bed, after dinner or in the car

The options are endless! So I encourage you to ask your child to tell you a story. Start with the Christmas Story, since they likely have internalized it already. Then next month ask them to tell you a story. If they don't remember all of the details, get the bible out and read through it so they can have another interaction with the text. This simple act can make a huge impact on how your child understands the way God works through stories. And don't forget, it's OK if they use their own vocabulary. This is a sure sign that they get it. Think of it as your child's personal translation of the bible :)

Modeling

As a teacher, I know that one of the most important things I can do for my students is to model what I want them to do. However, even if I model the activity perfectly, it doesn't mean that they will be able to complete the task without questions or gentle reminders. This advent season, I have been thinking about how Jesus was sent to earth, not only to save us from our sins, but also to model for us what it means to serve God, what it means to love God and what it means to be share God's love with the world. So I have decided that during Christmas, I am going to model for others by reading my bible. I am going to bring my bible to church, take it with me on the bus and I will use my bible as I read through the daily advent devotional our church has compiled. It is so easy for me to look up a verse on the computer or on my smart phone, but when I do that, I'm not modeling for others what it look like to read the bible and be in God's Word.

I especially look forward to modeling for our children. Simple tasks, such as how to look up a passage or where to go if we don't know the exact page number of a verse. These are skills that we acquire over time and we can help our children and friends by being a model for them and answering their questions.

Are there other ways you are hoping to model what being a Christian looks like? Leave a comment and let us know!

Blessings,

Jessica

"...as children grow, so does faith."

One of my goals as Director of Children's Ministry is to use my experience in education to explore age appropriate activities and curricula for our children. In my research I came across this article on the Children's Ministry site (link located on the right of the blog). What caught my eye is the connection between educational theories on child development and the author, Rick Chromey's comments on children's spiritual development. Here are a few key ideas that I pulled from the article but feel free to check out the entire article!

• Birth-3 yrs Faith is feeling


• 3-6yrs Faith is "fitting in" or belonging
  


• 7-9yrs Faith is mythic/literal, separating fact from fiction (and more!)


• 10-12yrs As decision-makers, these children can and need to see that faith is every second of every day as they strive to make life applications

There is SO MUCH MORE in this article than I can put into bullet point so i hope that you will check out the article and at least read about what Rick Chromey says about the age range of your children.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!

My name is Jessica and I am the Director of Children's Ministries at Redmond Presbyterian Church. The goal of this space is to share fun ideas and activities with families as well as articles and resources that I come across.

Are there topics you are interested in exploring? I would love to hear your feedback so feel free to post a comment with ideas and questions.

I hope you find the information here helpful and inspiring. Our children are such a blessing and I believe that they can teach us just as much as we can teach them.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Blessings,
Jessica