In the March Youthwork magazine we featured a favourite resource from Jason Royce called ‘Masked Appearances’. Here is the powerpoint presentation to accompany his idea.

We launched our new playing card resource at Youthwork the Conference last weekend in Eastbourne. A third of the all those at the conference went home with their own pack of cards, and were asking about how to do some of the card tricks we were doing on the schoolswork.co.uk stand. We only learnt the tricks a couple of days before the conference, and are really simple to do once you know how, but can look very impressive! We’ve found they are a great way to raise intrigue and curiosity in young people and is the perfect context to get conversation and interesting discussions going.

Continue reading to see the videos and learn how to do these tricks yourself.

If you’re thinking of running a prayer room or a reflective space in your school, you’ve come to the right place. Here are 11 ready to use resources, which require varying amounts of preparation and equipment, but are all available to you free of charge. They have been designed as part of Orison, which is a prayer initiative for use in schools encouraging children and young people to engage with prayer and thinking reflectively about themselves, other people, the places around them and God.

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Continue reading to find out more about Orison and to access the resources.

Transforming Lives have produced a fun quiz for Christians thinking about teaching…. including a set of cartoons. the quiz raises a lot of the same questions and issues that anyone visiting schools face, so check it out and enjoy some of the humour.

“We love our youthworker!” will be officially launched next spring, but here’s a sneak preview of the aims of the charter and the set of seven sections with the cartoons to accompany them.

This is a campaign to encourage churches to think about the way they employ a full time worker and is based on a set of seven promises that churches commit to follow.

We believe that keeping full time workers positive, productive and living balanced lives makes for great youthwork. That’s an important step towards building God’s kingdom among young people.

Churches who sign up to the Charter gain a set of benefits and can expect to attract the very best youth workers in the UK. And, of course, it can also help them think about the best way to support volunteer youth workers.

The charter is a joint project between Youthwork the Partnership and Amaze.

Keep reading to see the set of seven cartoons by the ever brilliant Dave Walker from Cartoon Blog, and a description of each of the seven promises.

In the latest Youthwork Magazine we gave you some ideas to use in assemblies based on money. There are loads of themes you can draw out of these, or purely use them for fun, but here’s the vid demonstrating the coin trick and an explanation of how it’s done.

Enjoy!

Rose Fisher is 13. As part of an RE lesson she was asked to write a poem on the topic of ‘Is there a God’. Her work was so profound and moving that it was published, together with other poems from young people, in a book called ‘Spirited Poetry’. It’s a fantastic resource that will make a huge impact in assemblies or lessons. Showing students other people’s work will often get them thinking on a much deeper level themselves.

So here’s Rose’s poem:

Where is God?
Rose Fisher Age 13

God’s in the snowflake that melted
But not in the snowball you threw
She’s in the midnight shadow that might
Have been there if the cloud only moved

God is in the words of the story
But not in the book’s printed page
She’s in every word that was shouted
But more in what you never dared say

God lives in the living fur’s touch
But not in the leather punk boots
He is in the cool stars of midnight
But more in the dawn’s golden fruits

God’s in the first fair trade chocolate
But not in the millionth Kit-Kat
She’s in the succulent pork meat
But more in Quorn. That’s a fact!

God’s not always in my heart
Or even in my head
But God can be there every step of the way
Even when he’s just one step ahead

This is an interactive site where you can produce signs customised with any message you like. A useful tool for anything you might be running in schools.

Do you use a lot of photos in your work and don’t have the money for istock pictures? Here’s a great site, with thousands of free pictures, highly recommended.

Brian McLaren’s book ‘Everything Must Change’ is one we’ve read recently on team here in Luton. Just came across this video of Brian introducing us to the main message of his latest book.