Respond CYP

Respond to the Word

A range of activities for Children (C) and Young People (YP) based on Mark 12.38-44

You will need: paper and pens.

Looking at verses 40 and 42 of the reading, explain that widows were poor and vulnerable people who relied on other people to support them. Ask the group who the vulnerable are in your communities.
Give everyone a sheet of paper and ask them to design a poster to raise awareness about one of the vulnerable groups they have mentioned. Their poster might encourage people to give money to that cause, but remind them that people need our time and talents, too.
With BBC Children in Need coming up this week, you could download some materials on vulnerable groups of children from www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey, to help with this activity.

Make a giving box to be used in the Live in faith activity

You will need: Temple chest templates, printed on card; scissors, glue and colouring pens.

Explain to the group that in the Temple there were 13 chests, or ‘giving boxes’, where people could give money to be used for a particular purpose.
Give each youngster a chest template and ask them to decorate it. They may wish to choose a particular cause or charity that interests them and add words and pictures that represent this.
Once decorated, ask them to cut out their chest, including the coin slot, then fold along the lines and glue the tabs in place. (For younger children, cut out their template in advance.)

To think through what we need to do to be humble –add to the ‘graffiti wall’ from last week

You will need: pens, graffiti wall.

Ask the youngsters to imagine they are making a ‘humble pie’ – something that makes you act with humility. What would the ingredients be?
Write these ingredients around the ’HUMILITY RULES’ heading on the graffiti wall, created in last week’s Prepare the space.

A fun reminder of the need for humility

You will need: a selection of individual fruit pies; cocktail sticks; sticky labels. The pies could be bought in a boxed pack or home baked.

Explain the concept of humble pie. When someone gets something wrong, they might be told to ‘eat humble pie’, to eat their words, to accept that they are wrong. It is a lesson in humility.
Invite the young people to think about times when they have got things wrong. Perhaps they have ‘bigged’ themselves up, or said they could do something that they couldn’t.
Invite them to draw a reminder of this on one side of a sticky label. Fix the labels around the cocktail sticks, creating little flags.
Set out the fruit pies on a plate. Invite people to stick their flag into one of the pies.
Share one of the prayers for the week and then invite people to share out the pies among the group.

A game to get children thinking about giving humbly

You will need: a metal tray; some coins.

Sit the children in a circle, with a gap left open to be the ‘door’. Choose one child to be the ‘catcher’ to sit in the centre of the circle with their eyes tightly closed or blindfolded. Place a metal tray behind them.
In silence, choose a child from the circle to be the ‘giver’ and give them a coin. They have to creep around the outside of the circle, in through the ‘door’, and place their coin as quietly as they can on the metal tray.
When the catcher hears the coin being placed on the tray, they must open their eyes and chase the giver out of the ‘door’ and around the circle. If the giver makes it all the way round and back in the door without being caught, they become the next catcher.
Explain to the children that today’s story reminds us we shouldn’t give to show off, but rather because we want to.

A reflection for Remembrance Sunday

You will need: the trailer for the film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and the means to play it – check it is suitable for your group.

Today is Remembrance Sunday. Tell the children about the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, a women’s camp built in 1939 where over 90,000 women and children died during the Second World War. You might show the trailer for the film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas as an introduction to concentration camps.
Hidden inside the clothing of a child from the camp, a written prayer was found, praying for the soldiers who were torturing them as well as for the victims. Part of it reads: ‘Do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us: instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering... our humility, our generosity.’
Take a time of silence to remember all who have died in war.
Use this poppy template if you would like a craft activity linked to Remembrance.