September 2018 - Families For Missions

Missions Class Ideas – Medical Missions

The third week of our missions Sunday School class for kids was about medical missions. We learned about a family from our local church whose dad serves as a doctor in Africa. We also had a young lady from our church come speak to the kids. She is a nurse and spent 6 months serving at a medical mission hospital in Zambia. She was able to show pictures and share about her experiences while living there. (Need an extra activity? Try having the kids color the Flag from Zambia.)

There are several missionary doctors from the past that you could choose to talk about. David Livingstone is one historical medical missionary that explored much of Africa, and there are many books written about him. Helen Roseveare was a missionary to the Congo in the 1950’s-1970’s. She practiced medicine and also trained others in medical skills. She was taken kidnapped and imprisoned, but she was later freed and returned to Africa to continue her mission work.

Here are some affiliate links to books you might like to use:

Our craft consisted of making a “doctor kit”.

We used the following supplies:

Black construction paper
Picture of a medical cross
Cotton swabs
Adhesive bandages
Wooden sticks/tongue depressors
Pictures of stethoscopes, medicine, thermometers, etc.
Tape
Glue
Crayons, colored pencils, or markers

Teachers will need to gather supplies and do a little prep work. I suggest folding the black construction paper in half and cutting out a small circle or rectangle to make a handle before starting the craft with the kids. This helps with the flow of the morning.

Instruct each child to color and cut out the medical cross and glue or tape it to the front of their doctor bag.

This craft was fairly simple, and the kids could customize it according to their preferences. The littlest kids (Kindergarten) did the basic gluing and taping, as well as attempting to cut out pictures. The older kids (4-5^th grades) were able to cut out more carefully and color in some of the pictures, too. Each child had their own doctor kit to take home and share with their parents.

A great way to drive a point home and make sure parents know what the focus of the day was is to print out small papers with verses that the kids can glue to their craft. You could use a verse like Isaiah 52:7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation….”

End your morning with a prayer for specific missionaries and a song. 😉

Missions Class Ideas for Kids – Mission Aviation

In the previous post I talked about how my husband and I helped with a summer missions class for the grade-school kids in our church. It was great fun to help plan activities and crafts for each week…the kids enjoyed it so much and learned a lot! Go here to read more.

For the week that we featured mission aviation, we talked about current Mission Aviation Fellowship missionaries that our church supports in Africa. My husband did a presentation using pictures from that missionary family, as well as pictures that he took on a mission trip to Brazil. The kids loved seeing pictures of airplanes and the runways where they land. They learned why airplanes fly and who they help. If you want more information on mission aviation pilots, you can look here.

During craft time, we used the kid’s activity book that MAF has on their website. You can download it here. Kids can pick from mazes, word finds, decoding, or just color in some of the airplanes. We had ages from kindergarten to fifth grade and everyone was able to find something to do. If you want some more activities and coloring pages, you can find them here.

The missionary from the past that we talked about was Betty Greene, the first pilot that flew the first MAF flight. She was able to transport two Wycliffe missionaries that needed to reach Mexico. You can read about her here.

Of course, we finished out the time by praying and singing our song, Be a Missionary Everyday. 🙂

Mission Class Ideas for Kids – Japan

I am so excited to be back and blogging again after taking a little time off over the summer for some projects and commitments. I have been very busy working on a new book that will be released in the coming months, and I have been soaking up some extra time with my kids.

I also helped with a summer missions class for the grade-school kids in our church. It was great fun to help plan activities and crafts for each week…the kids enjoyed it so much and learned a lot! I’ll be sharing more about this over the next couple of weeks.

Each week of the class we picked a different set of things to focus on: each week had a featured country, a past missionary story, a current missionary, a prayer station, and a craft. Small groups of kids rotated through each of these and spent about 10-15 minutes in each area. We also had an opening and closing time with song and prayer.

Here is a link to the song that we used (but we added lots of clapping between lines and some motions, too.) 😊 “Be a Missionary Everyday”

One of the weeks, we focused on Japan. Our missionary from the past was Jake DeShazer. He was a prisoner of war during WWII in Japan, and he hated his captors. After being freed, God helped him to forgive them and called him to return to witness to them. You can read more about him at http://www.jacobdeshazer.com/.

Each of the kiddos received a Japanese flag to keep. You can get one for your home or let your kiddos color one easily by making a circle in the middle of a white piece of paper and letting them color it red.

Our church has a current missionary that is working in the country of Japan that happened to be visiting during the summer months, so we arranged for the mother of this family to come speak to our kids. It was fun to have a real person there that was familiar with Japan. She even brought some dried seaweed for the kids to taste. Each child received a prayer card with this family’s picture on it, so they could take it home and remember meeting the missionary. Hopefully they will pray for them, too.

Our craft was to make koinobori. This is a Japanese flying carp that is frequently made or bought to be displayed around their children’s day in Japan. Many times, there is one for each family member. The dad’s is usually black, and the children have red or many different colors for theirs.

Here is a fun song in Japanese about the koinobori.

You can make one of these at home pretty easily. You will need a toilet paper roll (or paper towel roll cut shorter), some glue sticks, scissors, tissue paper, and string. Sticker eyes are optional (You can draw in your own.)

Use the scissors to cut circles or ovals out of the tissue paper and then cut each one in half. Let the kids join in with the cutting if they are old enough. The half-circles do not have to be perfect. Start gluing the half circles onto your toilet paper roll at the bottom and make sure the rounded part of the paper is facing the bottom. Overlap your pieces as you go, and continue around and up the roll til you reach the top.

Draw some eyes or use stickers. Make a hole on opposite sides of the top, and attach your string. Cut some straight pieces of tissue paper and glue or staple them to the bottom edge of the toilet paper roll.

Now you are ready to display your koinobori!

I’ll post soon about the other weeks and the activities we did…in the meantime, happy crafting! If you want some great information about Japan, check out Operation World’s website!