New Year’s Craft for Preteens: Creating a Living Memorial

Your preteens will enjoy this creative craft that helps them remember the events from the past year, with a focus on God’s faithfulness!

You’ll need:

• a large cardboard tube-similar to the ones inside large rolls of paper or plastic (Check with your newspaper office.)
• tape
• magazines
• scissors
• paper
• markers
• an instant-print camera loaded with film
• pipe cleaners
• anything else you want to use for this living sculpture

New Year’s Craft for Preteens: Creating a Living Memorial

Read Joshua 4:1-8 together. Talk about how Joshua and the Israelites built a memorial to remember how God had helped them.

Lay out all your supplies and tell preteens to work together to create a living memorial of the past year by taping images to the cardboard tube. Encourage kids to recall faith-related experiences, such as answered prayers, lessons learned, close encounters with Jesus, or fun times with Christian friends.

Help kids remember all the wonderful experiences they’ve had together at church or church events. If kids recall a funny experience, have them reenact it and take an instant-print photo of them to add to the memorial. Kids can cut out words or images from magazines to attach to the paper tube. They can sculpt images from the pipe cleaners, or they can draw pictures or write words on paper to recall events in the past year.

Keep your living memorial in your classroom as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and presence in kids’ lives.

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