Junior Church/Sunday School books or ideas

[ThePhantomDeregisterer]

Can anyone recommend books or ideas for ages 7-11 for Junior Church. We're a little, middle of the road CofE church. Our kids are getting older and we could do with something exciting and current. Browsing online means I can't see what's inside most books and there aren't that many religious bookshops around, the ones I have visited have more for little ones or teens rather than this age. Though on our summer trips I intend to try a few more!

Anyway, I would be really grateful for help, pointers, suggestions etc.

Felt boards for the children to present a Bible story are great, as is a simple dressing up box for them to act out scenes.

Thanks! I like both those ideas!

Register with Scripture Union Light Live, which offers you either the teacher's workbooks to purchase quarterly for a variety of age-groups, but also offers you the lessons online (with a back catalogue for the last few years too). The lessons do get a bit samey after a while, and you can pick and choose the style of lessons (some are a bit more evangelical than others).

have you tried the good book company? here

I used to use scripture union which was a bit hit and miss, depending on the author/age group. they had some fantastic lessons one onth and then a month that was totally uninspiring to me when planning lessons.

I used to make up a lot of my own stuff bloody minded teacher, can't conform though I did find that there were a couple of books around that gave you craft ideas for a theme, or sketches, or visual illustrations of topics, or games, so using a combination of them could work. would be harder work though than one book.

Also the Susan Sayers books published by Kevin Mayhew had some fair ideas in, which tied in with the church lectionary (unlike Scripture Union): there are different age-groups in this series (called Living Stones) - Rocks, Pebbles and something else! You buy the teacher's book for the entire year - for whichever year we are on at the moment (B, I think). This series has been out a while so they should be cheap to source from Amazon Marketplace.

Even if you only take a couple of ideas from a published lesson plan and then add your own craft or game or story-telling ideas, they are a helpful way into planning a Sunday lesson. Doing it all from scratch is like re-inventing the wheel every time.

If you want to try doing dressing up and acting out the stories, particularly if you are following the lectionary, then Creative Ideas for Children's Worship is very good. We've stopped using the Scripture Union resources as they are too samey. You could have a look at Roots on the Web for ideas about resources. You could also have a look at Lesson Plans that Work, which also follows the lectionary. At the moment we are using resources from CURBS, which are targeted at urban children. I think they're really good and very flexible depending on age-ability of your group.

Yes! Buy the Susan Sayers stuff!

(She's just had a stroke and could do with the royalties )

(She's my mummy !)

Ooh! Very grateful! There's some very useful stuff here! Thankfully I have the summer to prepare!

And at marmite I feel like I should now!

We use Light Live from Scripture Union.