Thursday, July 11, 2013

Children's Ministry: Jesus Gets Excited When We Pray!




Looking for some fun lessons for teaching children (and getting them excited!) about Jesus, can kind of be difficult. Especially when you have children in your classroom that can range in age from three months to almost 6th grade.

I found this on Pinterest- Fizzy Forgiveness Prayer Station.

What I really loved about this was the fact that you can take something relatively easy to find (fizzy tablets) and turned it into something really cool!

Kids LOVE fizz. Even I as an adult, feel child like exuberance when I see fizz. There is something just so awesome about effervescence. 

I took this fizz idea and made it my own. Sometimes to come up with a cool idea, we just need a little help from above-and others!

My lesson was to teach children about prayer. I don't think you can stress enough, the importance of building a strong relationship with our Lord. Prayer does this along with reading His word.

Welcome to the lesson of:
 "Jesus Gets Excited When You Pray!"

I used 1 Timothy 2:1-6 (NLT). I wanted to stress that Jesus hears all prayers, not just prayers that come from adults, and we should pray for everyone!


Also, I wanted the children to understand what praying actually means. I looked up and printed out the definition, and some easier words, to help describe what it means to pray.


After we took turns reading and discussion what prayer means and how it applies to the verse I showed the kids what happens when we pray.

I used two glasses and filled them with some regular tap water and for extra "fizz" some sparkling water.





I went to our local City Market and bought these Alka Seltzer generic tablets. We got 30 tables for roughly $2. I wanted to make sure we had enough for two child, at the very least.


I allowed the children to pick what color we would make the water-they chose green, purple. My children at home chose orange.

I had them gather around and I said, "Tell me how this makes you feel." I dropped a tablet into the water and it immediately began to fizz.

The excitement on their faces was extremely evident and also, they said it was pretty cool.

I asked them if it was exciting to watch the fizz, and they all said, "Yes!"


I told them, that every time we pray to Jesus, that's how he feels. He feels excited, because we're building a relationship with him. We're talking to him, we're including him in our lives. Jesus loves us so much and he wants to be a part of our lives.

I handed each kid two tablets (there are two in each pack) and said that each one of us could pray together for someone or about something in their lives. I also gave them personal discretion that if they didn't feel comfortable praying out loud, we would just pray in agreement silently with them.


To watch the kids pray with excitement was just amazing! I know it partly had to do with the fizzy tablets they got to play with, but we also got to watch them gain understanding that praying is a good thing. Praying can be fun!

If it's fun to go to the movies, shouldn't it be fun to spend time praying to God too? I think so!

Also, I told the kids, after we had gotten into a few prayers, that we needed to be quiet and listen. They could hear the fizzing noise in action. I said sometimes that's how God works. He answers our prayers, but sometimes we have to be quiet and listen. God is a gentleman and he never forces us to do anything.

At the end of the class, I allowed the kids to save up their fizzes and they all dropped their remaining ones in together to see if they could over flow the water (which of course they managed to do! I'm pretty sure that was the one silent prayer we had!!).

We finished up the lesson with another coloring page from TwistyNoodle! I mentioned them before in our Lamb of God lesson we did over Resurrection Sunday.

I hope you found this fun and can some how use it to teach your kids about how awesome and amazing Jesus Christ is!

Just an FYI-I have a few left over tablets and I kept the orange glass out for our kids, and when they pray I let them drop a fizz into the water. 

Make sure to monitor your kids too! If you use the alka seltzer tablets, make sure they don't eat them or drink the water that you use. I'm not sure what exactly could happen, but we don't need to try to imagine it either!

Have fun sharing and learning about God! I'd love to hear your ideas or how you've incorporated this into your own lessons and teaching!

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38 comments:

  1. This post is AMAZING. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing!!!!! God bless you.

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  2. Thank you for this idea!!! I'm going to use it with my Sunday school kids! I was searching for an activity to go with our lesson on prayer. They will love it & get the point. Thanks again!

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  3. I love this! I was asked last Sunday if I would mind doing Children's Church one Sunday a month. I can't wait until March so I can do this lesson with our kiddos. Thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas.

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  4. The only questionable ingredient in Alka Seltzer is the aspirin. While most people could ingest the water with the alka seltzer, there are some people who can't have aspirin because it irritates the stomach.

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  5. I constantly spent my half an hour to read this website's content all the time along with a mug of coffee.


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  6. We are incorporating this into our VBS on the night of Jonah. The first step how God heard Jonah's pray after being in the whale for 3 days. (God was happy & everything you described above ;) ) then when we get to the Ninevites all praying & turning toward God we are going to put all the remaining in! Talk about the 'grabbing of God's attention when we pray together & the power of 2 or 3 gathered together... it's the wrap up night of everything we've learned over the week so it's going to cover quiet a bit. Thanks for the idea!!!

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  7. I am so glad I found your page. this is a great idea. Thank you.

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  8. This so awesome! I am so glad I found this! Thank you so much for sharing!!! What a great way to teach kids about prayer and get them excited about it too!!!

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  9. Love this hands on approach to teaching our children the importance of prayer and building a relationship with God! Will definitely be using it! Thank you and God bless!

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  10. I know this is an older post, but I love the idea! I'm going to use this with my 5 and 3 year old next week as we learn about prayer.

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  11. I did this today with my VERY mixed age class, 1st-5th Grade. Every single kid was excited!! I set them up with the tabs in a cup so they wouldn't know what we were actually using. We used the water in a seperate cup to represent themselves (they each picked their favorite color) and Jesus was the tablet. When we talked to Jesus (we put the tabs in the colored water) Jesus got excited (all the bubbles) their faces lit up!! I also had them hold their hands over the cups so they could feel Jesus' joy, they thought it was great! Note- the colored water stained their hands- we quickly said that was a visible mark of Jesus sending back love. Again they we enthralled! This was a great project, I can not say Thank You enough!! P.S. My assistant leader, who did not know what I was doing as I was a last minute sub, even said how it was such a great tactile project for the kids. I spied a few showing their slightly stained hands to older kids and adults, big hit!!!!

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    1. I love the idea of holding their hands over the cups to "feel" God's love!

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  12. I absolutely love this! Thank you for sharing. I'm using this to teach ages 3-5 and I think it is perfect. Thanks again!

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  13. Thanks for sharing I loved this and it helped to put together a lesson for our children stay blessed

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  14. I LOVE this Idea. I am doing it tomorrow with a sunday school class and can already see their excitment. Thank you for keep it so simple! I think sometimes we feel we need to add so much, cram so much information into a lesson, that the point ends up getting lost. This was beautifully done. The only change I will be making it to direct them to pray to God the father rather than Jesus. I know this lesson will hit home with the littles. Thanks again!

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  15. I will be using this idea in my preschool class on Sunday. This will such a great reinforcement of prayer. We have been working on praying and the fact that it's as easy as talking to your best friend - 'cause God is! I love to hear them TALK to GOD!

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  16. You can get "fizzies", a drink from my childhood, at stores that feature retro things. It's a colored, flavored tablet that you drop in a glass of water and it fizzes and makes grape, cherry, or whatever soda in the glass. I don't think it will fizz enough for this demonstration, I would probably give it to the kids on a party day and remind them of this lesson.

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  17. You can get "fizzies", a drink from my childhood, at stores that feature retro things. It's a colored, flavored tablet that you drop in a glass of water and it fizzes and makes grape, cherry, or whatever soda in the glass. I don't think it will fizz enough for this demonstration, I would probably give it to the kids on a party day and remind them of this lesson.

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  18. I did this object lesson a little differently. I wanted to show the kids that Jesus wants to be a part of their entire lives, not just on Sundays. I started out with the fizzy tablet in the bottom of a glass. I told them that the fizzy tablet was Jesus and the glass was their life. I asked the kids how they thought we could help Jesus fill our whole lives instead of just sitting in the bottom of the glass and they said, "Prayer!" Then I had a cup of hot water which I said represented prayer in our lives. When I poured the hot water in the glass suddenly the whole glass filled with green fizzy water and I told them that with frequent prayerJesus can fill our whole lives. They loved it! Thank you for this fantastic idea. Kids really do LOVE fizz!

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    1. Love it!! I'm so glad that you made it your own. ❤❤❤ Keep it coming!!

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  19. Great idea. I think I'll swap the Alka Selzer for some fizzy vitamins just in case they anyone tries drinking it. You could combine it with the verse 'Taste and see that the Lord is good'. Just a suggestion.

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  20. Love this post and the Lesson ! Thank you for sharing .

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  21. This is so sweet. I just felt like a kid reading through and smiling. I'm teaching it next Sunday for our kids but will use vit c tabs so they can drink at the end . Thanks a lot

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  22. I love all the applications! At the overflow part I'm going to add we are overflowing with blessings and answered prayers! Thank you for posting this GREAT object lesson!!

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  23. Thank you for sharing your object lesson. Love your thoughts.☺

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  24. Thanks for this...do you have any activities to drive home the supernatural to kids.to get them to understand what it really means.

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  25. What a great idea. Sure wish I had thought of it. I will be sure to use it.

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  26. I did like very much your object lesson, I will definitely use it with our migrant kids that come
    our church every Sunday. I have to translate to Spanish language, these kids don't know English

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  27. I love this idea. I can't wait to show the kids at Bible school tomorrow morning. It's my first time teaching and I want to make a good impression! Thanks for making it a little easier for me. God bless!

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  28. Awesome idea! This will definitely help complement our Prayer lesson. I just need to find where to get the fizzies. Thanks so much for sharing! God Bless!

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  29. Ever thought to teach the kids about why something fizzles in the first place? Maybe we should start teaching kids about science from a young age instead of brainwashing them about god!

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    1. My dear friend,
      Science IS God and God IS science♥️

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    2. Science is definately Awesome! Don't Worry, Kiddos will learn all about science at school ,but in Sunday School we learn about the One that created the things that make science: Elements, atoms, genes, humans, animals, plants etc. "In the Beginning God created..."

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  30. Going to do this today in my 1st grade sunday school class. Thank you for sharing!

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  31. I have used this lesson several times and the kids love it. I love a hands on activity that gets the kids excited and reinforces our lesson!

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  32. This is great!! I’m so glad I found it. Do you have an idea how long the whole process took?

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