Finding Time

Materials
A compass

Activity
1. As a small game stand in the center of the room as the target. Students must arrange themselves in lines next to you to form a cross “+”.
2. Designate each direction of the cross as according to the directions of the compass (North, South, East, West).
3. Using the compass, let youth rotate themselves so that the correct line is facing north. Ask them to freeze and take note of their orientation in the room.
4. As the target you must now move to another place in the room.
5. On your signal participants are to reform the compass at the new location, aligning themselves in the correct directions.
6. First line of the cross to get in the correct position wins, making sure they are all facing their respective directions of the compass.
7. To make it more difficult, stand in a doorway, next to a wall, squat under a table, etc.

Debrief
After the game, ask youth/ children to point to north at a given signal. Check their alignment with the compass. Then try to confuse the youth / children by turning round, going to a corner or standing on a chair and asking where north is from those positions.
1. Whatever position we are in, a compass will direct us accurately to north.
2. What are some things that people use to find direction in life?
3. How accurate are these guides?
4. What directions are you aligning your life to?
5. How does a sense of direction help us in the twists and turns of life?

Application
The Holy Spirit is our inner ‘guide’. (John 16:13-14) The Holy Spirit keeps us on the right path in life by always pointing us to Jesus.

Finding Direction in life helps us to navigate its twists and turns.


MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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Waiting on God

Materials
Egg timer, stop watch, alarm clock, wall clock, a metronome and anything else used to tell time.

Begin with some questions:
What are some things you really would like to have, but don’t have yet?
What are some things you would like to do, but haven’t done yet?
Where are some places you would like to go, but haven’t gone yet?

Discussion
It’s often hard to wait on things. For some things we are not old enough yet? For other things we don’t have the money yet? Maybe we don’t even have the ability yet. You are not old enough to drive a car. You may not have enough money for a new bike. You may not have the skills to be a doctor yet.

God has plans for everything, but not everything may be ready yet. Sometimes we have to wait until God has everything ready. We have to trust he knows the right time for everything.

Show children all the time devices. Explain how each works.

Application
God says that learning to be patient is good for us. We can’t expect everything we want immediately. We must learn to wait on God’s perfect timing. (Hold up a clock) God has a set time for everything to happen, according to his plan. (Ecclesiastes 3:1) We must trust God completely, because we know he has a perfect plan for each one of his children. Sometimes doing God’s will means waiting for his timing. See also Romans 5:3-4; Hebrews 10:36

 

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
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Yielding to God

Activity
If you can obtain a puppet or two, bring them to your class. Using paper lunch sacks, or socks, provide children with materials to make puppets of their own. Have children design and name their puppets. You might give them a couple of stories to act out with their puppets. Another options is to have the children each make the puppet introduce itself to the rest of the class. You might give awards for the most unusual, best dressed, funniest, puppets. etc.
After all the puppets have been created and all the kids have used them a bit, ask the children the following question:

Debrief
“Who decides what the puppet does, the puppet or the person who’s hand is in the puppet?”

Application
Of course the puppet can’t make any decisions. It can only do what the hand makes it do. Nothing can hold back God’s “Hand” as He does what he pleases like a hand in a puppet. But God gives us some choices and we can resist the hand of God in our lives.

Our task in doing God’s will is to present ourselves to him (Romans 12:1&2) and to be filled with Him (Ephesians 5:18) so he can accomplish the tasks for which we were created. (Daniel 4:35, Proverbs 21:1)


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Simon Says

Matthew 8:19, John 12:26

Activity
Play a game of “Simon Says”? It’s an easy game. You do all the things Simon says you may do, but if Simon does not say that you can do something and you do it, then you are out.

Debrief
“Simon says” is an easy game as long as you follow. Following is the key to success. If you don’t follow then you are out. It is like that with Jesus too. We need to follow him. If we want to know if something is OK or not we can ask ourself what Jesus would do. If Jesus would do it then we can do it.


MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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Minefield

Objective
Making wise decisions involves knowing scripture.

Preparation
Draw a grid representing floor tiles on a piece of paper. You may choose to have a 15 by 15 square grid or larger. Mark a path through the grid of squares with each successive step touching the one before it either adjacent or diagonally. Count the number of squares for the correct path and make a piece of paper with a Bible scripture written on it for each square. For the rest, rewrite some of the scriptures so that they are not correct. Use scriptures that are well known and provide wisdom in making decisions. Proverbs has a lot of good choices. When in the classroom, lay out the peices of paper on floor tiles according to your grid.

Game Play
Divide the class into teams. The object is for each team to get its members through the mind-field without losing people. The group to get the largest number of students through the mind-field wins.

Kids decide whether a square is a mine by reading the scripture verses and deciding if it is correct or not. If it is correct it is a safe square to step on. If it is not correct it is a mine. If they step on a mine, they lose one member and another kid can try.

The first team to get across with least casualties wins.

Debrief
Scripture is our guide through life’s minefields. Wrong choices injure us. Correct choices lead us closer to God! Discuss how the scriptures you used help guide us down the right paths in life.


MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

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Fingerprints

Materials
Stamp ink pad, small pieces of paper for each youth’s thumbprint.

Preparation
If your youth are not skittish about having their thumbprints taken, have each youth create a thumbprint on a piece of paper. Photocopy these into a grid and have a contest to see who can identify which thumbprint belongs to who. Whoever correctly identifies the most thumbprints wins a prize.

Variation – Thumbprint Bingo
Take the thumprints on onion skin paper, tracing paper, or tissue paper. Photocopy 5 rows of thumbprints in 5 columns on pieces of paper to create bingo grids. Then put all the thumbprints in a sack and pull them out and project them onto an OHP. First youth to form 5 in a row in any direction wins. (If you want to make it easier, place a number on each thumbprint as they can be difficult to identify.

Debrief
Each one of our fingerprints is different. Psalm 119:73 tells us God made us special so we could serve him in different ways. Just as there are many different fingerprints there are many different ways for us to serve God. Each of us must try to discover how God uniquely want’s us to serve him.


MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

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Treasure Hunt

Instructions
See how many of the objects listed in the following scripture verses you can find. You have 1 hour in which to search for the items. (Body parts like “hand” don’t count)

For each minute you are late you are penalised by one item so that the group that finds the most items (-#minutes they are late) wins! In case of a tie, the team back first wins.

Example: Gen 45: 26 They told him, “Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.” Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them.

VERSES
PR 24:13, JOB 30:4, Judges 16:14, PS 45:1, Matthew 22:19, Matthew 22:20, Judges 16:9, Gen 41:42, 2KI 1:8, Luke 14:27, NU 4:9, ISA 40:12, 2KI 20:12, PS 90:4, Gen 27:3, Exodus 29:9, Gen 44:2, 2KI 23:24, Galatians 6:14, Genesis 8:20, James 1:23, John 6:35, Psalm 30:4, Ecclesiastes 1:13, Matthew 24:17, I Kings 6:6, 1KINGS 6:8, Ezekiel 42:6, James 2:3, Neh 9:4, Exodux 37:13, MK 7:28, Ezekiel 1:27, ISA 59:9, ISA 59:10, Judges 6:37, 1 Samuel 20:21, 2KI 6:1, PS 104:27, PR 4:25, PS 142:4, Song 2:9, ISA 33:7, LA 3:63, ZEC 5:5, ZEC 5:6, MT 7:3, MT 26:45, MK 8:24, LK 21:29, AC 8:36, 1 Chron 26:31, 1SA 1:9, Philippians 3:8, 1SA 24:3, JOS 2:15, 2KI 13:17, PR 1:17, PR 5:15, 1 Sam 18:11, I Kings 7:12, 2 KI 20:2, Neh 2:15, EZE 8:7, Eze 40:40, Ez 40:43, DA 5:5, HAB 2:11, GE 31:45, 2 Chron 23: 13, 1 Kings 5:17, Isaiah 28:16, 1CO 3:10, ZEC 10:4, NU 24:19, PS 8:6, PR 23:1, REV 11:1, PR 26:14, Eze 41:24, Mt 24:33, Luke 13:24

Debrief
When youth return, have a Bible with a “book mark” in it and Proverbs 2:1-5 highlighted. God’s Word hidden in our hearts is as a treasure. By following the Bible’s instructions, we come to know God and live for him.

See Conducting Scavenger Hunts for help, Hints, Safety Considerations, Rules, and other useful information to make your scavenger hunt a wild success!


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Measuring Up?

Materials
Obtain some flexible rulers or make them from cardboard. As an added variation, make a couple of the rulers with incorrect measurement markings.

Preparation
Make a list of measurements of various items found in the youth room or throughout the church.

Activity
Participants must scour the room and find the objects that match the measurements… first to get them all correct gets a prize.

Debrief
Have youth write the standards of measurement for our lives from God’s Word and scriptures we can use to measure our lives against God’s standards. You might give them some helpful scriptures to write on their rulers. Talk about how those standards are corrupted when the rules (rulers) are wrong. Then everything gets measured incorrectly. Those that had rulers with the wrong measurements will find it difficult to find any of the objects.

Application
When our measurements of obedience, ourselves (pride), expectations (jealousy), comparisons with others, and timing (patience) are wrong it messes up our results. Our standards for measurement must be exact and based on God’s Word or every measurement we make will be wrong. God’s Word is to be the ruler for our life. When we use other things as rulers our measurements come out wrong.

See Conducting Scavenger Hunts for help, Hints, Safety Considerations, Rules, and other useful information to make your scavenger hunt a wild success!


MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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Out of Tune?

Materials
Guitar that is intentionally “out of tune”

Activity
1. Choose a song that everyone is familiar with and begin singing it with a guitar that is badly “out of tune”. Participants are sure to stop you or say something about the “out of tune” guitar.

2. Get someone to tune only the first guitar string using a tuning fork, piano, electronic tuner, or a pitch pipe. Sing again!

3. Keep trying until you have tuned each string.

Debrief
Christians are like this “out of tune” guitar. Everything has to be right, each string right, so that we are in tune with God. A string can’t be too tight or too loose or it will not be right. All of us have to make choices in life. Some things are right and some choices are wrong. When we make bad choices we get out of God’s will – out of tune and our life sounds terrible to God.

What are some things you might be too tightly strung about? What affect does that have on your relationship with God?

What are some things you might be too loose about? What effect does that have on your relationship with God?

What did we use to correctly tune the guitar strings?
A standard for comparison. A pitch fork et. al. is already set to the correct pitch. By comparing the sound of the string to the sound of the pitch fork we can set the string to the right tune.

What is the standard we need to determine if our life is correct or not? 
Our standard is the bible. We compare our life to what the Bible says is right and wrong and we can discover if our life is in tune.

After the guitar has been tuned, sing through several songs the youth know that deal with following God.

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
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Grains of Wheat

Materials
Set up a checker board or chess board with grains of wheat according to the following story.

Illustration
Some time ago there was a display at the museum of Science and industry in Chicago. It featured a checkerboard with 1 grain of wheat on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, and 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, etc. A few squares down the board there were so many grains of wheat they couldn’t fit on one square. Above the display was this question: “At this rate of doubling every square, how much grain would you have on the checkerboard by the time you reached the 64th square?” Ask youth how much grain they think that would be?

After they finish giving their answers, give them the correct answer: “Enough grain to cover the entire subcontinent of India 50 feet deep.”

Debrief
Our faith may start out small, but as God uses it, the end result can be very large! 2 Corinthians 9:6

Application
Give each youth a grain of wheat and ask them to visualize it as a representation of some area where they need to trust God. They must take it home and place it in a prominent place where they will see it regularly and be reminded to pray.

Variation
Leave the board in place, but remove the grains of wheat and place them in a bowl next to it. Every time a prayer is answered youth must place a grain of wheat on the board and grab another grain of wheat to place with thier previous one at home. As prayers are answered the grains will grow and youth will have a visible reminder to pray and that God answers our prayers.

 

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
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