Monday, September 20, 2010

Cupcake Garden

Here's a fun way to reinforce your meeting on Creation, Nebudchadnezzar's sin, or any other Bible story that mentions grass. Before your meeting, mix together a bowl of coconut with a few drops of green food coloring. Have the children wash their hands. Cover the work table with a plastic tablecloth. Give each child a plain cupcake, icing, and a plastic knife.

Let the children cover their cupcakes with icing. Then have them spread the coconut grass on top of the cupcake (or simply use green icing, if they don't care for coconut). Encourage older children to help the younger ones.

Provide gumdrops, wax paper, toothpicks, rolling pins (optional) and clean scissors. Use scissors to cut notches in the tops of the gumdrops to create tulips and other flowers. Ask the children to save the green gumdrops for leaves. Poke a toothpick stem into the bottom of each flower. Have the children flatten the greengumdrops on wax paper (using rolling pins, if they wish). Then have the children cut the flattened green gumdrops into leaf shapes.

Poke the toothpick stem through the leaf and push it up the toothpick. Let each child make 1-3 flowers to put into his cupcake garden.  As the children are making their flowers, talk about the Bible story you have taught. For example, if your story was about Nebudchadnezzar, you could say, "The grass on your cupcakes reminds us of Nebudchadnezzar He ate grass while he lived like an animal for seven years. Then he finally admitted that God is King over all, and he gave God his wealth. Remember to always thank and praise God for everything you have."

Let the children enjoy their cupcakes or make one to eat now and one to take home. Provide sealable plastic bags for the ones they take home.

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