Creating Space in Small Places

One remodel challenge: Since my church's classrooms were built in the 1940s, they are small. Very small. I think kids just sat at tables back then and never moved, so you could cram a bunch of them into a small room.

One of the first issues I addressed was how to make the most out of my small space. I decided to make one of the organizational pins from Burton Avenue that I had seen on Pinterest. It was a magnetic board with little metal boxes stuck to it to hold crayons, scissors, glue sticks, and all the other stuff that had been in my cupboard.

The items came from Ikea. I googled it and the closest one was 3 hours away in Pittsburgh. Since my husband is the world’s biggest Steelers fan, it was no problem to convince him to take a trip down to the city. To tour Heinz Field, of course. And oh, by the way, while we are here honey, let’s go to Ikea!

We found the metal board just like I’d seen on Pinterest, but Ikea did not have the magnetic boxes to put on the board. So I hunted all over the internet and found some organizer boxes made for kids to put in their lockers. You could spray paint them different colors if you wanted to make it more lively.

It took effort to hunt down the supplies, but the finished product is worth it. I like it for so much more than its space-saving ability: The kids love taking the boxes off the board when we need them for crafts. And they even like cleaning up afterward because they get to put them back on the wall.

Moderator's note: This resource is from Rotation.org member Joan Eppehimer's KidFrugal blog, which she is sharing here at Rotation.org in order to preserve it for posterity and make it available more widely with our community.  It is part of a large group of lessons and resources that she developed to make "ministry happen when there are no resources to make it happen." Thank you, Joan, for sharing your creativity with our community!

You can read more about Joan and her ministry here.

Don’t Be a Wallflower – Make a Wall-Tree Instead!

I love this tree because it is 3D AND you can make it from used paper (because you know I love free and low-cost solutions!).

If you have brown or black paper that you have used for a bulletin board background or for anything else, it can be repurposed for this tree. Because the paper gets twisted it doesn’t matter if it is wrinkled or messed up a little. You can even upcycle the brown packing paper that some companies stuff their boxes with to make this tree.

I also like using a tree to decorate with because it can be used for any season.

• In the Fall you can decorate it and theme it as seen in the picture. You could even alter it by adding large acorns using the phrase “We Are Nuts for Jesus.” You could focus more on the pumpkins and do something like “God’s Pumpkin Patch.”
• In the Winter remove the leaves and add fiber fill on the branches for snow, with lots of snowflakes on the wall. Possible themes include: “There Is Snowplace Like Sunday School” or “Jesus Loves You Snow Much.”
• When Spring arrives, get rid of that snow! Add flowers, birds, butterflies, kites, raindrops, buds on the tree or green leaves, anything Spring-like. You could even make it a flowering tree if you are really ambitious. Scrunch up little squares of different shades of pink or purple tissue paper for the flowers. Spring trees can be themed: “Grow In God’s Grace” or “Jesus Makes All Things Grow” or “Spring Into Sunday School.”
• A summer tree will be laden with green leaves and apples on a sunny background. Some theme ideas for summer are “Summer Sunday School is TREEmendous” and “Sunday School in Summer is Is Apple-Solutely Fun”

Sharing Spaces and Repurposing in Children's Ministry

The fiery furnace story lends itself to drama. It is an easy story to bring to life with just a few simple props. I originally was going to make a refrigerator box into a fiery furnace. However, I found that large boxes were not as easy to get as I thought.

Then our short term missions team asked if they could set up our puppet stage (which we NEVER use) so they could practice for their trip. They wanted to know if they could keep it up in our classroom for the TWO whole months before their trip!

So here I was with this space hogging puppet stage in my Sunday School area and no place for a large box for the fiery furnace (that wasn’t materializing anyway).

"What's a girl to do in a situation like this?" I said to myself.
Then it hit me – make the STAGE into the fiery furnace!

We had leftover brick paper from another project, so I covered our stage with that. The missions team could still rehearse with the paper on it.

I wish I had time to cut a window in the furnace, but since the curtains were still on the stage, it would have required some finagling. Instead, we had Nebuchadnezzar look into the furnace from the side when we acted out the drama.

My co-worker made these great flames.

Using a puppet stage for the furnace had other advantages. “Jesus” could get in from behind it without any of the kids noticing. If you look in the photo, you will see that we backed the stage up to our double doors. I didn’t even know that “Jesus” had gotten into the furnace when we acted this out. When we threw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the furnace, there was Jesus! He untied their ropes and walked around among them.

What I took away from this is that God can guide you to use things you already have to make things that you want. Just ask him to open your eyes to the possibilities all around you.

You know the flames my co-worker made? They became the flaming sword that God put outside the garden of Eden to guard it after Adam and Eve were dispelled.

And the puppet stage that became the fiery furnace? It morphed two more times for other uses before we took it down. (Don't worry - you'll get to see it all in future posts. I know you are just dying to.)

Just in case you are curious, you can also see that the entire children's area was morphing while we did these activities. The walls are all white here because we had taken down the paneling and primed them for the murals you see in the background in other posts.

Moderator's note: We are grateful for this post from Rotation.org member Joan Eppehimer's KidFrugal blog. You can see the accompanying Fiery Furnace Drama Lesson here.   Thank you, Joan, for sharing your creativity with our community!

You can read more about Joan and her ministry here.

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