Fund Raising - Gospel Tabernacle Kids Church Style!

Last week in our Children's Church we started a fund raising project which will take the boys and girls through the whole process from making the product, to selling it and donating the proceeds. At the end of the time, we plan to visit the project site which is in a nearby town and see firsthand what the kids accomplished!

For our project, we purchased Easter candy molds and make pretzel rod chocolate pops and chocolate lollipops. It sounded like a great idea at the time, but after I purchased the supplies, I began to feel a little leery of how it would work. Thankfully we have a small group and were able to recruit enough adults so there was one adult for every 2 children to supervise the activity.

I placed the chocolate pieces in small squeeze bottles and melted it in warm water in the crock pot ahead of time. Then we lined the children up along the island in the church kitchen and allowed them to squeeze the different colored chocolate into their molds.

What fun! The children became enthused about the candy-making project and all of them worked hard the entire time. It was one of the best class times we've had! We even sold several pretzel pops immediately following church to one of the dads who came to pick up his kids.

This week we'll be adding homemade labels and bows letting everyone know the boys and girls made them as a fundraiser. We'll be selling them to family and friends as well as at work and at a small craft show at one of our sister churches.

Then the money will be donated along with some of the boys and girls offerings to a mission project in a neighboring community. I'm making an "It's Time to share Jesus clock" to show how close they are getting to their goal. I'll let you know how this turns out when we reach our goal. I should have taken pictures of them at work!

In the end, I think this will turn out to be a valuable lesson in giving for the boys and girls. Not only are they giving their time and energy to the Lord to make the candy, they're also earning money to give to the Lord for missions. I definitely will be doing this lesson again!