Jesus loves kids!

The Lord gave me an opportunity this week to share a story in the 1-3 grade chapel at the Christian school where I teach at part-time. Since it is February, I wanted to find a lesson that spoke on the love of God.

I looked through my file box full of visualized stories and found one entitled, "Jesus Loves Kids!"  For about ten years, I subscribed to a magazine called Evangelizing Today's Child (now called, Teach Kids!). In the magazine are tons of ideas for use in the Sunday School class, junior church, VBS and Christian school.  Each volume included a visualized story that you could laminate and put in your files.  I'm not sure how many I have, but I do have plenty.  I used so many when I taught elementary school full-time, as well as using them for other church ministries.

The lesson, "Jesus Loves Kids!" focused on a few main points:

1.  Jesus made the way for our sins to be forgiven.

2.  Jesus showed His disciples that He loves children.

3.  Jesus understands what it is like to be a child.

4.  Jesus did miracles that involved children.

5.  Jesus loves to hear children praise Him.

For each of these points, I showed the corresponding picture and shared Bible verses.  It was such an encouraging lesson to all the children.  To know that Jesus loves us when things are not going the best at home or when we sin is such an incredible promise!

The lesson included other activities and visuals to do, but I decided to do something on my own.  Throughout the story, the verse, Mark 5:14 is emphasized.  It says, "Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for such is the kingdom of God."  Every couple minutes during the story, I had the students recite the verse--once standing up, once in their seats and once using their quietest voices.

At the end of the lesson, we played a review game.  I made a large paper heart and wrote on it the phrase, "Jesus loves you no matter what!"  I cut it into large pieces and placed sticky tack on the back of it. There was a white board in the room and I used that to draw a heart (the same size as my paper heart) with Mark 5:14 on it. I placed the pieces below the drawn heart randomly on the white board.  I made up questions from the story and asked them to the students.  Each time a correct answer was given, that student was to place a piece of the heart in the right spot on the drawn heart.  After every couple puzzle pieces placed, we had to recite the verse.  During this game, the verse slowly disappeared as the paper heart was put back together.  The students also tried to guess what the heart would say at the end.  They really seemed to enjoy this game, and I loved making it to go along with the story.