Psalm 23 in Kid's Church

I have decided that my aim to post daily does not apply to weekends.  :P 

At Church, I run Kid's Church for the little ones - from ages 2 to 5.  Our group is called 'NewGen' because our Church is named Generate Church, so all the kids group, youth, music etc, all has the word 'Gen' in.  The primary aged group is named 'NextGen.' 

 When you have six children, all five and under running around, it can be hard to get a message across.  To illustrate my point... One day we were learning about Samuel and I had just given them the rundown on how God talked to Samuel when he was just a little boy, and how God talks to little children as well, that you don't have to wait until you are grown up to listen and obey God's voice and so on.  I finished and there was dead silence around the table, then one little girl piped up, "There's a pencil under the table!" Right..... glad you were all listening!  :P  

Some days they are really good and other days, I'm not sure they even heard the story, but I get encouraging reports from parents on how their kids were singing the songs, or talking about the stories, so I know it must go into their minds somewhere!  

This week, we were studying Psalm 23.  We had done this last week, but had run out of time to do the craft, so I decided that it wouldn't hurt to carry it over two weeks anyway.  Normally, I make a little slide show animation using Power-point where the story is animated with characters and scenery, and I read out the story as they act it out, like an Bible story book, only on the computer.  However, since we had done that last week, I hit YouTube to try and find another animation or something that I could play for them.  I found one little video made by some Kid's Church group where a little shepherd was singing the 23rd Psalm.  I really liked the animation, but did not like the song.  It was one of those high and squeaky, this-is-for-kids-so-let's-sound-like-kids-while-we-sing-it-and-don't-worry-too-much-about-pitch-either sort of songs, which I am so not in to!  But I couldn't find anything else, so I put the video into movie maker, stripped the audio from it, and layered Keith Green's version of Psalm 23 into it instead.  I had to remove some of the footage because it was too long, and also had to chop the instrumental out of the song to make the pictures line up, but in the end, it worked quite well.  I would post it, but I think it would be breaking copyright, so I won't...just in case.  :)

After we watched the video, and talked again about how a shepherd takes care of sheep, and God takes care of us, we did a colouring picture, and then made little sheep with Psalm 23 printed on them, like in the picture.  This was the picture which gave me the idea, although our sheep weren't quite as perfect, as 3-year-old's insist on putting legs in strange places!  But they were cute.  I was going to put cotton wool on their backs, but ran out of time....and glue.  So we didn't.  :)

So next week we are going to be doing Psalm 150. I'm thinking we could do a music day, and make instruments or something.... I  might even bring my violin in, although I haven't decided yet if I want to subject my violin to at least six pairs of eager hands.....

Psalm 150 here we come!!