30 May 2021

Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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Bible readings for today

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Psalms 29:1-11
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17

Collect

Blessed Trinity, 
in the relationship of the Godhead 
you show us how to love, 
how to give unconditionally, 
and to reveal your truth. 
Call us to that model of transforming love. 
This we ask through Christ our Mediator.
Amen

Trinity Sunday (John 20:19-31)

Today's story looks at Jesus appearing to his disciples, and how Thomas doubted that he was really the resurrected Jesus. 

Holy Spirit Windmills

An activity based around the verse 'God's spirit gives new'

What you need: A copy of the template, a pencil for each child, thumb tacks, crepe paper in red, orange, yellow and blue, stuff to decorate with.What to do: Cut out the template. Get the children to decorate it. Cut down the dotted lines on the template.Pull the four corners with a * into the middle.
Take a thumbtack, and carefully push through the centre of the template and all four corners. (note: leaders will have to help do this for the younger children)
Take a pencil and push the thumbtack into the pencil. Make sure that you don’t push it all the way.
Attach crepe paper streamers to the windmill. You may like to wrap them around the pencil. Or have them attached to the wind mill.
Test that it works by blowing it.

Quick Questions

• What is wind?

• Where does wind come from?

• What is the Holy Spirit?

Story craft

Create a three-sided stage showing scenes from the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus.
This craft looks at the life of Nicodemus, as displayed in John’s Gospel. The composition is really simple for this craft, with the hardest element being cutting the shapes – if you have younger children you may want to pre-cut in part. There are two options for making the scenes -- either printing in colour (much quicker), or printing in black and white and having the children colour in.
Detailed instructions are found here
The template for making the scenes in colour is found here
The black and white template is here

Gospel Conversations

Gospel Conversations from the Diocese of Dunedin
Chris Holmes returns, and is joined by both John and Trish Franklin to talk about John 3:1-17. The focus was on the gospel passage rather than delving directly into the mysteries of the Trinity!

Balloon Challenge

A game for younger children.

You will need: Balloons, chairs or cones
What to do: Give everyone a blown up balloon. Get them to line up at one end of the room. When you say go, they have to get to the other end of the room as fast as they can by touching the balloon with only their heads.Once they get to the other end do it again. This time, change the body part. E.g. Only touching the balloon with your left ear etc. The game ends when ever you like!

Balloon Ball

A game for older children

You will need: A balloon, a two goals (two chairs a metre apart) at each end of the room.
What to do: Divide the children into two teams. Give each team a goal. The object of the game is to get the balloon into your team’s goal.
You can make this interesting by calling out which part of their body they can use to move the balloon e.g. ‘head’ or ‘left hands’, or ‘tummies’. The winning team is the team with the most goals after 10mins.

Butterfly Talk and Activity

You will need: Tiny pompoms, glue, pegs, googly eyes, pipecleaners, ziplock bags, lollies (milk bottles, raspberries/blackberries, marshmallows), cheerio cereal. Print outs of the caterpillar template, or your own version
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Instructions: Get them to choose 5 pompoms and hold them while you talk about....butterflies.  Who has seen any Monarch butterflies this summer?  Watched them lay eggs, watch the caterpillars grow, seen the beautiful chrysalis and the amazing butterfly come out?  Well....  Lay your pompoms out on the table as you listen to this story:

Our bible reading today is when Jesus talks to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a very important and clever Jewish teacher and he came to ask Jesus some questions (at night!).  He could see that the things Jesus was doing were more amazing than an ordinary man could do.  He was very surprised when Jesus said to him that everyone, including him, would need to be ‘born again’ to be able to be with God.  Nicodemus was confused!  How can you be born again?  Well you can’t!  Unless you think about a change that happens in your heart.  Your heart can be transformed just like a caterpillar is completely changed into a butterfly.  Because to be ‘born again’ is talking about the change that happens inside you.  That change can happen when you want God in your life and want to try and put Him first.  So let’s build our caterpillar and then transform him/her into a butterfly!
Butterfly craftSo, you have 5 pieces of a caterpillar: caterpillar body x 2, pompoms, antenna, ziplock bags for wings.

Stick the caterpillar card to the peg, the side with writing on goes on the bottom.  Then glue the pompoms to the peg. The head will be the end that opens.  Add a pipe cleaner if liked for an antennae.
God’s love and learning more about Jesus from the bible is like a gift to us that transforms us.  So I have a gift for you, to help you remember God’s love is like a gift, you only have to accept it!  Who is going to accept my gift?! (lollies)
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​The lollies are going to be your butterfly wings, so you will want an even number.  You can choose 2 milk bottles, 2 blackberry/raspberries and 4 marshmallows and few cheerios.  Put them in the ziplock bag, half on each side.  Then close the bag and hold it in the middle with the peg.

Older Kids Group Discussion

Talk about : Read the passage from the bible and talk about the story.  Talk about being born again.  It is a phrase we hear a lot in Christian circles but what does it mean?  Jesus says you have to be born again in order to ‘see the Kingdom of God’.  It’s a bit like later on he says you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you receive it like a child.  Jesus really rated children, he is on your side!  He loves so many things about you, he tells the grown ups to try and be more like you....
So another way to think about being born again is to think of the caterpillar/butterfly cycle.  It is truly amazing how a green stripey caterpillar transforms into a Monarch butterfly. But it really happens.  You know what?  God’s love inside someone can transform them in the same way - a huge transformation.  It is also amazing to look at say your Dad or teacher and know that they were once a tiny baby inside their mother’s tummy!  They have been transformed by time, as they have grown up.  God offers everyone the chance to be transformed.  If we accept his offer, his gift of love into our lives and accept that He should lead the way in our lives, then we can be changed into so much better people! Follow with the caterpillar craft (see other activity on this day)