Friday 26 December 2014

Family Camp 20-22 Feb

As you are filling in your diaries and calendars for 2015, make sure you mark in the weekend of 20-22 February for our Parish Family Camp. Open to all families from Musikool Kids and the parish - this is a fun-filled, relaxing weekend away.


More details will follow soon, with costs and programme. Any questions, please get in touch with Melanie, the church office, or type your question into the Comments box on this post.

Friday 19 December 2014

Sing for Joy this Christmas Eve

Wednesday 24 December
5pm
Sing for Joy

Join us at the Falkingham Centre, Wesley Care, 91 Harewood Road 
on Christmas Eve for a special family, kids-friendly service. 

We will share the Christmas story and sing some favourite Christmas carols.

All welcome!




Santa visits Musikool Kids

Watch the video of our special Christmas visitor at Musikool Kids here.

Monday 15 December 2014

Awesome Kids' Christmas

This morning our Awesome Kids, together with friends from Musikool Kids presented The Christmas Story. We premiered our 2014 movie, which you can view on YouTube here.

The children and youth from the parish took the service, complete with nativity play, amazing singing and beautiful prayers and readings.

There was a surprise performance by band Note Talent (a group of "old youth" who used to play musical instruments back in the day!)

Jamie, Dylan, Erin, Emma and Michaela sang 'This Little Light of Mine' - beautifully. We had a puppet performance by a gorgeous donkey and a shepherd, voiced over by Jamie and Izak. Our actors were fantastic, and coped with challenges such as untimely toilet stops by lead characters and a tooth falling out! 

Well done kids - each and every one of you is a star!


Sunday 14 December 2014

A Musikool Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas party at Musikool Kids on 5th December. A highlight was the beautiful singing and signing to Silent Night.

We were also treated to a special visit from Father Christmas! Rudolph being out of action with a sore hoof, Father Christmas arrived in rather spectacular fashion. Check out the photos below!













Wednesday 10 December 2014

Kids' Christmas Service this Sunday

Join us this Sunday, 14th December at 10.00am 
at St Joseph's Catholic Church (Vagues Rd, Papanui) 
for our Kids' Christmas Service & Nativity Play. 
ALL WELCOME!!
Some of the cast during our 2014 Nativity Movie Shoot

Thursday 4 December 2014

Christmas Party

Join us for our Musikool Kids' Christmas party, Friday 5th December 10am. Lots of Christmas songs, carols, and hopefully a visit from Santa!

Sunday 30 November 2014

Watching and waiting...

Christmas decorations with salt dough
This morning our Awesome Kids finished the salt dough Christmas decorations... there was paint, spray paint and glitter galore - and the finished products looked amazing!

We also had fun practicing our lines for the kids' Christmas service and nativity play, which will be held on the 14th December.

While we wait for Christmas, we are watching and waiting for God's light. Every time we see or hear about someone helping helping someone or showing kindness - an act of love... we see God's light shining through - a 'Godsighting'.

God is all around us, in us, and working in our world today. Where can you watch for God this week?

Friday 28 November 2014

Silent Night


We are learning how to sing and sign Silent Night.  You can watch the NZ Sign Language for Silent and Night being demonstrated here.




Picture-w24-11
Silent
Picture-w46-60
Night


Sunday 23 November 2014

Getting ready for Christmas

 This morning our Awesome Kids made salt dough ornaments to decorate our Christmas trees with.

Melanie took them home to bake and will bring them to church next week to be painted. 

Sue kindly pre-cooked a batch of decorations so we each had one to spray-paint gold or silver to take home today.

Here are Harry, William, Andrew and Spencer having a blast with the spray cans!

Monday 17 November 2014

Parable of the Talents

On Sunday morning we heard the parable of the talents. In Jesus's day, a talent was a gold coin. We were each given some gold coins (chocolate!) and card, and used them to make cards to share with others.

We talked about using what we have to do God's work. We talked about the things we are good at, and gifts we have, and what things we can do to share God's love with others.

Izak used his talent for construction and turned his cardboard into a cool car, using the chocolate coins for wheels!

Ready to shine!

On 9th November, we heard the parable (story) of the bridesmaids and the lamps. We learnt that God wants us to always be ready to shine our lights - to share God's love with other people.

Check out the cool lanterns we made, with working (battery operated!) lights inside! Thanks Dave and Heather for a truly AWESOME TIME!


Saturday 8 November 2014

Filming begins!

A reminder that the first film shoot for our Christmas movie is on tomorrow - Sunday 9 November at 2pm. Contact Melanie for details.

Angelic scene from last year's movie


Friday 7 November 2014

Twighlight Garage Sale Tonight!

Come along to our parish garage sale, in the car-park of the Chapel Street church from 5pm tonight. Lots of children's toys, books (new and second hand) and goodies. Sausages and scrummy bacon and egg pies would make an easy tea - be there early before they all go!

Sunday 2 November 2014

Kyla's baptism

This morning we celebrated the baptism of Kyla.

Kyla's family and friends were there, and all the Awesome Kids to welcome her into our church family.

Emma and Monica read the bible readings and Jamie said a prayer.

Welcome Kyla!





We heard the story of poor little Tom, who received an invitation to the palace for Princess Kyla's birthday. He begged, borrowed and traded for ingredients to make a birthday cake to give her... a two layered vanilla cake, with ten candles and the reddest, ripest, plumpest, juciest strawberry in the land.


On the way to the palace, he faced a terrible troll, a dark forest, a scary bear and a hungry guard... and by the time he arrived at the party the cake has been destroyed piece by piece. He had nothing to give the princess... but offered her the wonderful story of his adventures with the cake. 


The princess thought it was the best present ever. It was her favourite gift and the beginning of her friendship with Tom.

Tom could have given up, turned around and gone back home when things got tough - but he chose to be strong and continue to the party. 

Jesus wants us to be strong, to remember that it doesn't matter how young or old we are, how poor we are, how small we are, or that things don't always turn out as we'd planned... what matters is that we always try to do our best, to live in God's way serving and loving others... not trying to impress others, but showing God's love by our actions.

We made hangings from recycled CDs with mini mirrors, to remind us to reflect the way of Jesus in the world through our actions... and allow God's light to shine through us.


Friday 24 October 2014

Neti's answers

A few weeks ago, our Awesome Kids enjoyed a White Sunday Party with Rev Neti and Moe. The kids asked Neti a whole heap of fantastic questions, about his childhood, sport, talking to God, favourite colours... and there were a few tricky ones Neti had to think hard about!

Here is Neti's answer to Keegan's question, "How many books in the bible?"

"The bible is divided into two sections, or parts. They are called...
  1. The Old Testament (which has 39 books)
  2. The New Testament (which has 27 books)
This makes a total of 66 books altogether."

Thanks Keegan and Neti for a great question and answer! If any other Awesome Kids have a question for Neti, please let us know!

Sunday 19 October 2014

Isabella's prayer

This morning Isabella led our congregation in a special prayer she wrote herself. Awesome, Isabella!

You can watch it by clicking here.




Crafty kids making thank you cards

Friday 17 October 2014

Welcome back to Music!

Cups and saucers out; cushions on the floor; name tags sorted; stamps chosen; bubble mix poured; scarves, rainbow ring, claves and parachute ready; Horace the Teddy-bear hiding... all ready and waiting the arrival of our Musikool Kids families on our first day of term four.

We are very lucky to have such a great bunch of volunteers who help make Musikool Kids possible. Thanks guys!


Plenty of bubble fun this morning!

Thursday 16 October 2014

Musikool Kids starts back tomorrow

Musikool Kids resumes Friday 17 October. We look forward to seeing you all for a fun-filled, festive term 4 of musical play.

Sunday 12 October 2014

The Great Feast!

Today was White Sunday, where in Samoan churches the children dress in white, take the entire service and are celebrated. Whilst we didn't take the whole service, Ella and Keegan helped Moe light the candle, Catherine led us in prayer, and the rest of the Awesome Kids helped with a drama.

We acted out the parable of The Great Feast. Spencer played the part of the king, who planned a banquet and invited all his friends. On the day of the party however, the friends were too busy or couldn't be bothered to turn up. The king sent out a servant to find out why they didn't come. They all gave very lame excuses and the king was very sad and cross. He then sent his servants out into the streets to invite everyone they could find to come and share in the banquet. 

Jesus said God has given each one of us a special invitation: to accept God's love into our lives. God is pretty awesome and loves each one of us so much and wants the best for us. What we do really matters to God. So the story Jesus told is to help us understand and remember this special invitation, to try and live in God's ways, showing love to other people.

To help us remember this parable (story) and help celebrate White Sunday, we held our own great banquet. We had invited some very special guests, Rev Neti and Moe. Fortunately they didn't make any excuses, they were very happy to turn up!

The Awesome Kids enjoyed having Neti and Moe to themselves for a while, and we had great fun eating, talking and laughing together. The children posed some thought-provoking questions to Neti, such as: "How do you talk to God?", "How many books in the bible?", "What sports do you like?" and "What is your favourite colour?"






Congratulations Emma and Corban!

Corban
Two of our Awesome Kids have had fantastic success recently.

Emma sat an ICAS Exam (International Competitions and Assessments for Schools) for Writing and achieved Distinction. Congratulations Emma, that is an outstanding achievement!

Corban helped his soccer team win a tournament, and was awarded a very impressive looking medal. He wore it to church this morning (check out the photo!)


Friday 10 October 2014

Come and Join the Party!


Awesome Kids Rules!

Awesome Kids looked at the 10 Commandments and came up with some pretty good rules for living of their own.

Here are a few of them:

- Love one another as Jesus loves us
- Respect your elders
- Care for your environment
- Believe in yourself and in others
- Help others when hurt or in need
- Accept others
- Try to help others as much as you can
- Don't lie to anyone
- Keep your bedroom tidy
- Pick up your clothes
- No running in the house


Friday 3 October 2014

What Rules?

Do you like rules? Does your family have rules? What are the rules at school? Do you play a sport or game that has rules?

Knowing the rules means we know how to act, how to play the game, or what is expected. As we learn to live with other people and figure out the world around us, rules are very helpful.

In this week's story from the Bible, we learn about some rules God gave the people, called The Ten Commandments. Some of these rules you may have heard of, and they are pretty sensible rules which you will probably have at school and many other places. Here are a few of them:

- Don't take what is not yours.
- Don't tell lies about other people.
- Treat your mother and father with respect.

You might like to test your family's knowledge and see who can remember the other seven commandments! In the story from the bible, people asked Jesus which was the MOST important commandment of all. Do you know what Jesus said?

CLUE: "---- God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your mind. And ---- your neighbour as yourself." (See Mathew 22: 36-39).

Join Awesome Kids this Sunday Funday to find out more, and have fun with your friends at church. 

Welcome back!

  It was a hot day for the first day back at the Chapel Street Centre for 2024! Our Awesome Kids enjoyed some ice blocks to cool off. We had...