EmailGod has blessed us richly in this life, and the natural reaction to that blessing should be a desire to give back. The Bible also tells us that God loves a cheerful giver. So, how do you convey that excitement about giving to children and encourage them to give themselves. Obviously, it begins with teaching them the biblical reasons and mandate for giving, but it also helps to inject a little bit a fun into the process. If the Bible tells us that God loves a cheerful giver, there is nothing wrong with injecting some fun and cheer into the actual giving process. By doing so, the children in our ministry get to develop the habit of doing something that God calls us to do, and enjoy the actual giving part at the same time.
With that in mind, our ministry recently ordered some miniature wishing wells from Spiral Wishing Wells to use during our offering time. The wishing wells are those things that you find in malls and at the zoo where you start a coin rolling down a shoot and it rolls around and around until it finally makes its way into the hole in the bottom of the wishing well. I know that every time we pass one, no matter what the cause, my kids empty their pockets and mine of any coins before we can move on. There is just something captivating about watching the coins go round and round. The miniature ones are affordable at only $20-$25 depending on how many you order. We ordered two.
If you attend a large church with a larger budget, the larger wishing wells are available as well, but the small ones work just fine for our purposes.
At the beginning of our offering time, we place the wishing wells at the front of the classroom on either side of the room. We explain why we take an offering every week and why giving is important. We explain what cause their offering goes to, and then we invite kids to come forward and give their offering while some music plays in the background.
The first week we brought out the wishing wells to use in offering, the kids were fascinated with them. They all wanted to rush forward to watch the coins drop into the wishing well, but we only let those kids who had brought offering come forward to use them. By doing so, we have created some additional excitement about giving and encouraged the kids to save their coins to drop in the wishing wells at church to support another child half way around the world.
In the interest of full disclosure, our website is not affiliated with the Spiral Wishing Wells company. That said, if they read this article, I think they should contact Tony to advertise on the site, because I think these wishing wells are an outstanding way for children’s ministries to encourage the habit of giving in the children they minister to.
Related posts:
- Mother’s Day Lesson & Craft “A Fragrant Offering”
- How Do You Answer Kids’ Hard Questions at Church?
- Giving Object Lesson for Children
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
While I understand the idea behind this, I must disagree with only allowing those children with $ to come forward and try the wishing well. Encouraging the children to give is one thing, excluding children who may not have $$ to give seems to me to be contrary to Jesus’ teachings. I would think there is another way to encourage them, other than exclusion.
This is a great idea! Promoting the fun of giving should go hand in hand with the reasons why we give. Why is it so foreign to most of us to make giving fun? We have our kids participate in the giving we do – such as making PB&J sandwiches and sack lunches for the homeless. They come with us as we had the lunches out. It works great – the homeless people perk up a lot when they see our cute kids, and the kids get a kick out of helping.
Our churches Little Mission Friends (ages 1-3) class have an on going mission project. We collect money all year to go towards our Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
The way we collect is, each child has a “Mission Piggy”. The plastic piggy banks came from a dollar store. Each child has their name on theirs and I let the children decorate them with different stickers.
They collect change from parents and grandparents and really look forward to filling their piggys.
Right before Christmas we empty the piggy’s and put all the money together and turn it in as a class.
This is a great way to teach the little ones about helping others.
Great idea, I’ve been looking for these for years…Only problem is, I’ve not been able to find one for less than a couple thousand dollars! Their that much on this site BUT I’ll look into their grants available. Great Find!
I think Wayne was writing about their mimi or toy versions which are something like $25 each.
Joe,
Yes, I was talking about the smaller ones. When we bought them they were $25 apiece or $20 if you bought more than one. As I recall, there was a break on shipping if you ordered more than one as well. We ordered two.
We are a couple more weeks in since I originally wrote the article, and more and more kids are starting to bring their coins and having fun giving back to the kingdom of God.
Good Luck!
This is a GREAT idea! I LOVE it! Thank you for sharing! So much fun! We’ll have to see how we can incorporate it.
Great find Wayne! I think I’ll grab one for our VBS offering. Every year we do girls vs boys competition with a VBS mission offering. This might be a great angle to freshen up the event.
Either that or I can talk my pastor into using this during the offering in big church. We make sure kids + parents are together for offering time in our order of service.