52 Crafts for the Christian Year

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Paper-plate angels, scented Christmas cards, Epiphany star streamers,
fish mobiles, prayer pockets, palm branches, seed bracelets, sheep
puppets, joyful wind banners, and pop-up puppets.

Forget the stained-glass windows and shiny oak pews. If you are a
member of a “family” congregation, you know the real attention
getters in any church are the hand-crafted decorations created by busy
little children in Sunday school. But sometimes little children get
tired of creating the same old thing. This book, gleaned from ten years
of Sunday school projects, offers one-craft-idea-per-week for a whole
year. The craft ideas are arranged in order of the Christian
calendar—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. All
of the projects are child-friendly with a focus on using inexpensive or
recycled materials. Most are made from traditional materials, such as
construction paper, dixie cups, paper plates, ribbons, yarn, and
drinking straws, as well as easy-to-scrounge home supplies, such as
toilet paper rolls, aluminium pie plates, plastic bottles, and even
plastic bubble packing. Some ideas have been borrowed from other
cultures such as Japan and Mexico.

Simple black-and-white illustrations and easy-to-read text help make
these tasks easy to follow and require minimal adult supervision. To
centre all crafts in a Christian context, a key scripture passage is
included with each project. Highly recommended.