No Place Like Home Group
Group Activities

Sermon Title: "There's No Place Like Home"

Scripture Reading:  Luke 4:21-31

MATCHING HEARTS AND HOMES: You can divide the children into teams or let them play individually. The teacher will cut out small house and heart shapes from various colors of construction paper and hide them around the room. The children will search the room to find hearts and homes of the same color. Continue to play until all the hearts and homes of the same color have been found and matched up. See who has found the most!

BEAN BAG TOSS: Make or buy some bean bags. Label them JESUS in bright letters. The children can play in teams or take turns throwing the JESUS bean bags into a box that has been covered with construction paper or brown wrapping paper and decorated to look like a house by drawing windows and doors to it. Add red hearts to the brown box "home", as well. Let the children know we're putting Jesus into our homes and hearts.

BALLS AND BALLOONS: Write parts of today's Bible verse on slips of paper and place them into balloons and blow them up before class begins. Divide the children into teams. A team member from each group will try to throw a ball to land in a basket or box. If they get the ball into the box, they get to break a balloon and get the part of the Bible verse that is in their balloon and place it on a poster board. The object of the game is to get the entire Bible verse in the right order.

FINGER PRINTING: Provide each child with ink pads, construction paper, and markers. The children will draw a picture of a house and then add their finger prints to the house and draw happy faces on their finger prints with the marker. If children are older and want to make their home more special, they can add the words, "MY HEART IS JESUS' HOME."

JESUS BOOKLET: Each child can be given supplies to make a mini booklet, stapled together or hole punched with yarn to hold it together. Each page can have words or a small drawing that shows something they know about Jesus. (Examples: heart, carpenters son, loving, healing sick, etc.)

JESUS SCROLL: Provide a piece of construction paper, 2 straws, markers, and stickers for each child. The children will write today's Bible verse on the construction paper. They will then tape a straw to each end of the paper and roll it up to form a scroll. They can use a sticker, a piece of tape, or a piece of yarn to hold the scroll in a roll.

HEART NECKLACE: Let the children draw a heart on a piece of card stock and decorate it and cut it out. MY HEART IS JESUS' HOME may be written on the heart and hung on a piece of yarn around their neck.

SHARE A SNACK: Have some "Home Made" sugar cookies in the shape of a house. Use your imagination in decorating the cookies.

SING A SONG: WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS; INTO MY HEART

Song: "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"

Music: Words and music PDF

MP3: Piano Accompaniment

Song: "Into My Heart"

Music: Words and music in PDF

MP3: Piano Accompaniment