Young Raleigh Mission Community
FunFaith ran throughout 2023 but is currently on a break. Please check back for updates in 2024!
Proverbs 22:6
"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it".
Please join us for bible stories, arts and crafts, music, singing, prayers. Everybody is very welcome!
Contact Stacey James for information on [email protected] or 07891482169
January 2023
What a brilliant first session! Thank you to all the wonderful children and their brilliant parents for coming along this Sunday morning, we hope you all had fun! This session we learned about the story of creation and how all things came to be. Children listened beautifully to the story and then went off to do their activities. We had one table for making 'Creation Lollipops' - one for each of the seven days. We had a clay table where children made creatures great and small and flowers and we also had a game - Creation Bingo! This was followed by a play and prayer around the parachute. At the end of the session, we went into the church to see the congregation and show them what we had been up to!
February 2023
LOVE was the theme following on from creation, we explored how God loves everything and everyone. We likened God’s enormous love to an elephant and a giant heart with each piece inside representing people on earth. We also decorated heart shaped biscuits! Yum!
March 2023
Happy Mother’s Day! We had a lovely morning today celebrating all the lovely mums in the world! We made rainbow boards on which the children wrote all the things they love about their mums, we did some finger painting and we made daffodil posies! The children then went into church and gave out posies to all the ladies in the congregation.
April 2023
We had a BRILLIANT FunFaith session today, celebrating and learning about Palm Sunday! The children started the session off processing through Church waving their palm crosses throughout the hymn ‘Make Way’ before heading into the hall for arts and crafts! Today we made handprint palm wavers and donkey faces! We had some colouring, dot to dot worksheets and a maze where we had to get Jesus to his donkey. We finished off listening to the Palm Sunday story with a drink and some snacks before heading back in to church to show the congregation what we made!
May 2023
It was lovely to be back for FunFaith today! We heard the ‘Breakfast on the Beach’ story from John 21. The children made some fish and used cheerios to make their scales. They also made their own fishing nets full of fish! Our last fish themed craft was a mosaic fish made of different colour tissue paper. We played a really entertaining game at the end called ‘Flap the Fish’ where the children used newspapers to flap a paper fish across the hall. This gave us lots of giggles!
June 2023
We had a fantastic morning at FunFaith today hearing ‘The Widow’s Coins’ story. The children made little 3D Widows, did some coin rubbing and made some excellent coin headdresses! We also had some colouring and word searches! We finished up with creative prayer whereby the children looked at coins and said what they could see on them; for example, the portcullis. We talked about how the portcullis helps keep the Crown Jewel’s safe in the Tower of London and then thought about and prayed for the people that keep US safe. We then went into St. Peter's Church to show the congregation what we had been up to and processed through their last hymn of ‘O when the saints go marching in’ which the children LOVED!
July 2023
Today at FunFaith we heard the story of ‘The Lost Sheep’ and we made some very cute little paper cup sheep! The children learned how even though the shepherd had ninety nine sheep, he was missing one, and it was precious to him (like us) so he went out looking for him and didn’t stop until he found him; demonstrating how every single one of us is special, important and loved by God. As well as this, there was a baptism at St. Peter's Church, Budleigh Salterton which the children of FunFaith joined the congregation to watch! It was great to be joined by some of the baptism party’s children for the first part as well!
August 2023
Today we listened to the story of Jesus and The Tax Man, Zacchaeus. We learnt how Christians believe that everyone is unique and valuable to God. Jesus saw that Zacchaeus was just as important as everyone else, so he spent time with him and taught him about being kind. Zacchaeus was then able to lead a better life and treat others the way God wanted him to. We painted our hands and fingers (which the children loved!) to make the tree, Zacchaeus and Jesus. The children also made some lollipop scenes with string so Zacchaeus can travel up and down the tree - brilliant!
September 2023
Today we listened to the ‘Feeding of the 5000’ story where we learnt that Jesus used a little boy’s lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed an enormous crowd of people; 5000 in fact! The story reminds us that we should always put our trust in God who provides for us. It also teaches the importance of sharing, and shows us to make the most of what we have. We used play-doh to make our very own fish and loaves of bread. The children also made little baskets out of paper cups and pipe cleaners with some awesome little pipe cleaner fish as well. Lastly, we used the ever versatile paper plate to make our own loaves and fishes scene.
October 2023
Noah's Ark was the story for our tenth FunFaith session! The children heard the story of how God instructed a good man called Noah (and his family) to build a biiiiiig ark and gather together lots and lots of animals because he was going to flood the world. Noah was faithful to God so God protected him and Noah and his family stayed nice and safe during the flood. We had some really exciting activities - colourful air dry clay to make some cute animal figures (pigs and giraffes were the favourite to make!), we had a lollipop stick craft with the ark and big waves and a really creative ‘storm’ hat!
November 2023
Our theme this week was centred around ‘Prayer’ which followed on nicely from last time where we learned that God had spoken to Noah to tell him about the flood. How did God do that? There were no mobile phones back then! God spoke to Noah through prayer and that is how we, as Christians, talk and listen to God. The children made colourful prayer bead bracelets, decorated their own framed Lord’s Prayer squares and made a beautiful display of prayer leaves which will be up in St. Peter's Church, Budleigh Salterton for everyone to see!
December 2023
It was our Christmas FunFaith today! The children learnt the true meaning of Christmas by hearing the story of Jesus’ birth! This was done by a game of ‘Bingo’ so while listening to the story, they had to tick off any characters/features they heard about. That was lots of fun! For our crafts we had Christmas biscuit decorating, a stained-glass nativity stable scene tree decoration, lollipop wise men and angel doilies! To finish up, we played pass the parcel and went into church to see everyone where we were treated to Poppy playing Hark The Herald Angels Sing on her violin - amazing!
