Do, Make, Pray and Sing activities based on Matthew 16.13-20
Choose from these ideas to help the children make connections between the Bible reading and their lives
What’s in the box?
Identify objects using touch
You will need: boxes, items of strange textures, e.g. silly putty, jelly, pine cones, a hairbrush, cling film, frozen peas.
- Display several closed boxes with different items hidden inside each one.
- Invite a volunteer to come and put their hand in a box without looking in it – see what happens! Are they brave enough? What does it feel like? Can they tell what the object is?
- Ask different children to try each box, and ask how it feels to trust and not know what they will experience.
Cardboard church
Explore building solid foundations
You will need: lots of cardboard boxes, masking tape, chunky felt tip pens.
- Explain that you are going to build a cardboard church, but you need to build proper solid foundations first.
- Allow the children to work together and make a flat base. Then ask them to construct a building on top of it, out of the cardboard boxes, held together with masking tape.
- Ask them to write some of the Bible verses from today’s story on their cardboard church, and times when they feel able to trust God on the inside.
Key-rings to the kingdom
Decorate a reminder about the story today
You will need: blank keyrings, felt tip pens, printed sections of the Bible passage.
- Give each child a blank keyring and felt tips to decorate.
- Encourage the children to write part of the Bible passage about being given the keys to the kingdom, or write/draw anything that reminds them of belonging or being cared about and loved by God.
- They can take away their keyrings or give them as gifts to family and friends.
Prayer cairns
Build and remember that Jesus is the rock we can build our lives on
You will need: rocks, felt tip pens.
- Ask the children to choose a rock, and to think of someone or something they would like to pray for.
- Invite them to write those prayers on their rock and pile them up, one at a time, to make a prayer cairn.
- When everyone has finished, say a prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for the opportunity to build this cairn today, to bring all of our individual prayers and concerns together. Please bless each one and help us to remember that you are the solid rock we can build our lives on. Amen.
