Six year old asking questions about Christianity - not sure how to answer

[NannyR]

I was chatting with the children I look after in the car on the way home from school today about the nativity story.
The eldest (age 6) was asking about who was Jesus's father if it wasn't Joseph. I said it was God and this led to lots of questions along the lines of "if God was Jesus's daddy, why did he send him here to die? That's not what a nice daddy would do if he loved him. Why didn't he save him instead of letting him die on the cross?"

She often asks quite "deep" faith related questions like this when I'm concentrating on heavy traffic and her siblings are squabbling in the back and I'm afraid I do try to fob her off by suggesting she asks mummy at bedtime or her RE teacher.

But the fact that she is repeatedly asking me is leading me to think that I should be trying a bit harder to answer her. It feels like she has identified me as someone who is knowledgeable and able to answer her questions and I'm really not!

I'm a practising Christian but I'm having great difficulty trying to put what i believe into language a six year old would understand ( when I'm not sure I've got it straight in my own head a lot of the time!)

The family are Roman Catholic but their family situation means they are not able to get to church that often. (she's desparate for me to take her to my church but that's a whole other topic!!!). Mum is more than happy for me to read bible stories to them and talk about faith issues.

Does anyone have any experience of talking to kids about the fundamentals of the Christian faith? Are there any books or websites that people could recommend?

Thank you

You absolutely have to get the Jesus Storybook Bible, it is the best Christian thing ever written for children. www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0310708257/?tag=googhydr-21&hvadid=9964506185&ref=pd_sl_7eqtyk6ucg_b We read it to my DD whilst she was in the womb. She is only 18 months now and would never sit still to listen to it at the moment as it is meant for older children. It is so beautifully written and extremely powerful - we would constantly be crying as we read it to her. Not in a bad way though :)

And to address the particular question she raised, you could think about verses like Philippians 2:5-11, which paints a beautiful picture of Jesus willingly, humbly choosing to subject himself to service and death to rescue mankind. Jesus had to go to great lengths to bring Heaven to us, because we are unable to get to Heaven ourselves.
In the end, the only way we can avoid being tongue-tied answering questions like this is to practice, by meeting with other Christians and talking about ideas like this until we can put the Bible's message in our words.