Story bags for the Church childrens corner

[verybusyspider]

has anyone done this for their church or creche?
I feel inspired to do some themed bags in our childrens corner rather than the general toys that are there at the moment to try and involve the children more in Gods message. I'm thinking for children aged 18months to 4yrs who don't go to sunday club. I'm working on a sheep bag at the moment - story of lost sheep, cuddly toy, picture to colour... any ideas?

I'm working on service sheets for the 5yrs+ too so any experience of that would also be great

In terms of content (rather than theme ideas) we found the list here useful for prompting ideas of "quiet" stuff we could use, if it helps at all?

Thats perfect, now I just need to develop the themes - the idea of contacting the diocese youth team too, hadn't thought of using them as a resource.
have you created pew play bags? how where they received?

we did them a couple of years ago as part of our work towards the Child Friendly Church award - we tried to make ours "all age" (well up to about 8ish) & they have been very useful.

TBH the children who regularly attend don't use them as much as their parents normally bring some quiet toys/books with them, but they have proved invaluable when we have baptisms, parade services etc, when there are usually children who aren't in church very often & need something to keep them amused - the parents are usually very grateful anyway!

If you are going down the theme idea it might be worth having a laminated list of contents in each bag, as ours always get jumbled up... (Ours are not themed though, so it doesn't really matter until you get 6 cuddly toys & nothing else in the bag )