Messy Harvest 2017 was held in St Helen’s Church, Longhorsley on October 7th.

We had 40 people there – 24 children and 16 adults. The children were a range of ages, from 3 months old to 14 years but most were in the toddler to Year 2 (aged 6-7) group.

Messy Church ran with the familiar format: Registration on arrival and given their “Passport” to be stamped at each “Station”. The children were then able to complete the craft activities in any order over the first hour and receive their "Stamp" on the passport!

The theme this session was “Harvest” so we “Thanked God for our: Food, Family and Homes”. For the Food craft we stuck picture of food and a Mealtime “grace” on a paper plate, for our

Families we made a Heart mobile with the names of our family on and for our Homes we decorated gingerbread house-shaped biscuits.

After the crafts the children were taken in to the Sanctuary and we sang a few songs. We had a story told to us using 2 puppets: James and his Grandad, where Grandad explained to James that Sainsburys hadn’t provided the food and in the end James thanked God for his chips! I then recapped the theme and how each craft fitted into it before we said Thanks for our tea, before we ate it.