Creekside Covenant Kids: August 2012

Week 5: Peter and Cornelius

The bottom line for the week is:

God wants to use me to show others the power of His forgiveness.

This week we learned about Peter and Cornelius, and what it means to not show favoritism and to love everyone equally. In the story, Cornelius and Peter are both given visions from God that bring them together. Cornelius was a God-fearing man who was respected by the Jews despite him being a gentile, and Peter, of course, was a Jewish follower of Jesus. Because Jews and Gentiles were not supposed to spend time with one another, it was strange for these men to both be in Cornelius' house. God had shown them both in visions that they should not discriminate against one another, but should be accepting, because God loves all men equally. Because God loves everyone, so we are to love everyone, and this means living with a heart of forgiveness. God uses His followers to show the world that He loves and forgives openly and graciously.

For our real life application experiment, we watched what happened when we put laundry detergent into vinegar. These two ingredients reacted with each other and bubbled like crazy! After it is done bubbling, it leaves a residue in the bowl. We talked about how it is important to control our tempers and to forgive others so that we don't fight and leave residue on our relationships.

Our snack today was forGIVEness mix, a trailmix that the kids got to assemble themselves! They each made one bag for themselves and another bag to give to someone that they could share God's forgiveness with as well. The kids had a great time mixing up their bags and thinking about who they could share with.

The craft for the day was making stained glass votive holders! We used colorful tissue paper to decorate the holders, then put electric candles inside them and saw how beautiful they were all lit up. Next we talked about how showing others God's forgiveness is like being the candle. If we have God in our lives and are plugged into His power, we can shine out beautiful things just like our colorful votives are!

Here are some pictures from this week:

Older kids!

Making forgiveness mix

Caleb showing off his bags!

The little ones

Working hard

Norm and Lynn teaching away!

Our awesome volunteers "testing" the play-doh

Beautiful pieces of art!

Week 4: Peter's Restoration

This week's bottom line was:

When things get hard, don't forget what you know!

I was out of town this week so I don't have picture, but I'll fill you in on what I know! This week's story was about Peter's restoration, from Matthew 14:66-72 and Luke 22:54-62. Jesus and the disciples were at the Last Supper, where Jesus explained communion, and called the disciples out for the fact that they would turn their backs on Jesus in His time of need. Peter was certain he would never reject Jesus, but Jesus told him that before the morning, Peter would deny three times that he knew Jesus. Jesus and the disciples went to Gethsemane where the soldiers came to arrest Jesus. Peter attempted to fight the soldiers and got scolded by Jesus for not trusting His Father. As Peter was waiting to hear what would happen to Jesus, a man approached him and asked if he knew Jesus, but Peter said no. He did this three times, just as Jesus had said. Peter got scared of what could happen to him if he admitted he knew Jesus, and him and the other disciples turned from Jesus because they did not trust in God. We can only do hard things with help from God! After Jesus rose from the dead, He sought out Peter and reminded him of the power that we can have if we are plugged in to God's power.

During snack time today the kids made empty tomb snacks to remember the miracle of Jesus' resurrection. They used a bagel as the tomb, and crackers to represent the boulder that was rolled away to reveal that it was empty!

For craft, the students decorated butterfly magnets. Caterpillars go through a tough but incredible transformation to become butterflies, and sometimes that's what it feels like to be transformed by God! Even when things get hard, we need to remember that God is in control, and that we can trust in Him. If we remember what we know, hard things become easier to get through!

Week Three: Peter is the Rock

This week's bottom line was:

What is important to God should also be important to me.

During the story we learned about Jesus giving Simon his new name (Peter), and why Jesus chose that name. The name Peter is from the Greek work petros which means "rock". God chose this name for Simon because he was to be the foundation for the church. In Matthew 16:18, it says "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church". We talked about how when Jesus told Peter this, there weren't a bunch of churches and Christians, and that telling Peter that he would be the start of all of these things was a huge deal! Because Peter realized that the growing of the Church was important to God, he made sure it was important to him as well.

During our application time, we talked about things that are important to God. The kids came up with some awesome responses such as showing kindness, being healthy, obedience, and showing love, they are all so smart! Each student got to write something that is important to God on a river rock, and their challenge was to keep the rock with them during the week as a reminder of what should be important to us.

The next activity had to do with how Jesus gave Peter a name with a very special meaning. We researched what all of the children's names meant, and they got to make tiles with their name and meaning on them. We had meanings ranging everywhere from "Red Head" to "Gift from God" and the kids loved discovering what their names meant. We also spent some time talking and thinking about how we could live out our name-meanings in real life. It was incredible to hear their insightful answers and their overwhelming creativity.

We finished off this fun-filled week with ice cream sundaes (sorry parents)!! We topped our sundaes with things that looked like rocks to remember the Peter was the rock that Jesus chose to build the church on. What a great week!

Here are some pictures: