Do-It-Yourself Sunday Morning Material

Your Step by Step Guide

1. Note all the Sundays in the year.
2. Put in the key Christian Festivals.
3. Put in when your church has all-age worship, family services or Church Parades.
4. Put in any other special times to celebrate, for example – Harvest Festival, Patronal Festivals, Christian Aid Week or Fair Trade Fortnight,
5. Work out what you want the children to explore throughout the year – Old Testament, New Testament, Spiritual Disciplines, People of faith, Living your faith…etc.
6. Fill in the blanks!

Be aware of School Holidays that might affect the number of children and families at church.

Rachel Smith, Director of Children's Ministry at St Aldates, Oxford.

Rachel has been writing her own programmes for the Sunday morning groups and the summer holiday club at St Aldates for many years and she has posted much of her excellent work on theSt AldatesWebsite. 

Ellie Wartew, Director of Children's Ministries at Christ Church, Flackwell Heath

offers this advice on 'Do it Yourself'writing.

I write my own series and resources on a term by term basis so as to be able to factor in various festivals/occasions/mission days that need attention and sometime to co-ordinate with themes that the adult church are covering.  Often these may be based on a broad faith topic such as 'prayer'or a study of a particular Bible character or book.  My children's teams are structured such that a different team takess responsibility for a small group 'response'time each week meaning that I have a natural structure for my term's activities of 2nd Sunday - prayer, 3rd Sunday - craft, 4th Sunday - storytelling.  In order to resource these different weeks of activities, I look out for books that give a number of activity ideas on various bible themes that I can mix and match to produce a variety of sessions.  Some that I would highly recommend are:

• Pick 'N'Mix- Judith Merrel, Publisher: Scripture Union,
• 100 Creative Prayer Ideas For Children - Jan Dyer, Publisher: KINGSWAY,
• 100 Active Bible Games For Children - Jenny Brown, Publisher: KINGSWAY,
• Tiddlywinks: Pray & Play- Kathy Cannon, Publisher: Scripture Union (particularly fab for Under 5s)
• Early Days With Jesus Big Activity Books (1,2 & 3) - Publisher: CWR,
• also google for 'Free Christian Colouring Pages/Sheets'to make your own worksheets or take home puzzles in word/publisher and another great resource iswww.puzzlemaker.com which lets you create and print wordsearches, crosswords, codes etc. andwww.biblegateway.com for lots of different versions of the Bible at your fingertips to copy and paste for memory verses/worksheets etc. - particularly recommend the CEV as a child friendly and easily memorable version.

Alison Tuddenham, Children's Minister at Holy Trinity, Hazelmere

Here's some documents that Alison has put together and here team use at Holy Trinity. They base their structure around 3 M's -

Alison says "I have a great little book called '100 ways to teach your children about God'by Karyn Henley which i have used for inspiration, plus the 'Love Life Live Lent'for kids booklet and '100 worship activities for children'by Chris Leach have also been helpful. 'Glitter and Glue'form the Tiddlywinks series has some reasonable craft ideas for Pre-Schoolers."

Here are Alison Session notes on'Jesus and the poor'.