This month we have been concentrating on the Easter story. We looked a the events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week and talked about why we celebrate Easter. That meant we talked about love, forgiveness, resurrection, hope for the future and trusting in God! Big themes!

We also learnt about some of the stories of Jesus appearing after the resurrection to his disciples.We played a game where we had to guess who people were, did some very dramatic (and giggly) acting and made pictures of how we would show God's love to other people.

In these stories, the disciples were feeling scared and sad (on the road to Emmaus), doubtful (Thomas) and guilty (Peter), but Jesus appeared to reassure them. This made us feel better about times when we know we are not 'perfect' followers of Jesus.

We have been singing (and trying to get the hang of the actions) 'Trust in the Lord with All Your Heart' by John Hardwick.

We have been learning about the Beatitudes. These are a series of sayings of Jesus that are recorded in the part of Jesus' story we call the Sermon on the Mount. We made a big mountain to go on the wall and some people to put on it who are listening to Jesus. We thought about how we treat people who are our friends and whether we could treat people who aren't our friends in the same way.

Here are some American children showing what they learnt about the Beatitudes.

This month's focus has been baptism. We had a baptism of a baby from our church family at the beginning of the month (on the weekend with lots of snow!) and in junior church we talked about the baptism service.You can read more about baptism in the Methodist Church here.

We heard the story of Simeon and Anna who saw Jesus when he was taken to the Temple as a baby to be dedicated to God. They had been waiting a looooooong time for God to save their people and recognised that Jesus was God's way of doing that. We talked about how children are welcomed into God's family, by baptism or by a dedication service.

We talked about John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus and made doves (with lots of tricky folding!) to remind us of the special things that happened when Jesus was baptised. We talked about baptism as an adult and watched this young man talk about his faith and baptism

This month we have been thinking about different ways to pray. We talked a lot about the Lord's Prayer and what the different sections of it mean.

This month, church had a special prayer room open one weekend, focussing on the environment, and we prayed in different ways in there as part of our church family.

This month we've been singing 'A Band of Angels' by John Hardwick

Some more videos celebrating Christmas for you to enjoy!

A Social Network Christmas

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

The Christmas Story

Wishing you all a happy Christmas! :)

This month we will be focussing on Advent and looking forward to Christmas. In Junior Church we will be practising for the Nativity service on Sunday 18th December (come along and bring your family, it'll be awesome!)

So on the blog this month we'll be showing you some ways in which people are celebrating the Christmas story online!

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The Natvitiy Factor - competition to tell the Nativity story. You could take part yourself or just watch other people's videos, like these:

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The Natwivity tells the Christmas story throughout Advent on Twitter and Facebook.

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Keep checking back here, there are more things to come this month!

Leave us a comment if you've found anything you want to share.

We have been thinking about the WHOLE of the Bible in Junior Church this month! We've been trying to see it as one big story about God and the world, from stories about the creation of the world in Genesis right to predictions about the end of the world in Revelation.

We learned about the Bible being divided into two parts, the Old Testament:

and the New Testament:

and found out that the Bible is like a library of books of different sorts (poetry, history, letters) rather than one book in which all the sections are the same.

This month we have been looking at the story of Moses, a big story from the Old Testament.

We watched this video which tells the story of Moses using different websites.

We've been singing "10 rules 1 God" by Dave Godfrey, which tells us about the 10 Commandments which God gave to Moses after he'd led the Israelites out of Egypt. In the All Age Worship this month, Julie also told us an easy way to remember the 10 Commandments by looking at the numbers. Can you remember them all?

This morning we watched a video about the shoebox appeal which we are going to take part in at church this year. Instead of our usual toy service (when you brought in your old toys to send to other children), this year we will be bringing in shoeboxes!

Find out more about what to pack and what will happen to our boxes at the Operation Christmas Child site www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk

This month we looked at some of Jesus' healing miracles and talked about how Jesus welcomed everyone. We have been singing 'Jesus never, never, never, turned anyone away' by John Hardwick.

Our harvest project this year supported the Leprosy Mission and we learnt lots about leprosy and thought about how people who have leprosy can feel isolated and pushed out of their communities.

The last Sunday in September was Back to Church Sunday and we looked at the story of the paralysed man whose friends made a hole in the roof of a house to get him to Jesus. We used this Through the Roof version of the story which involved milkshake!

Is church ever like this? How can we stop people from feeling left out?