Sunday Snippet: Online World tour with SIM.

SIM (Serving in Mission) is an international mission organization that serves people throughout the world, particularly in Asia, Africa and South America.

And they have a totally brilliant website for kids, not to mention bible teachers looking for some inspiration and materials for teaching about missionaries.

My kids love playing on this site: when they arrive they can choose to travel to Asia, Africa or South America. As you click on a continent you are taken to different lands on that continent where you can choose to read short information files, play games, do puzzles online and there are a whole lot of printable materials as well. It is a great and glorious geography lesson all with the purpose of describing what missionaries do in that country.

I have found the resources for each continent invaluable. Really great. For each continent they have:

• Geographical, historical, wildlife and social information.
• Fact sheets, flags and biographies.
• Local stories and folk tales.
• There are crafts – that are really simple enough for kids to do themselves like making maracas and pinatas.
• Printable coloring pages with things like local wildlife or finger puppets.
• Games kids there play.
• There are even recipes that would really appeal to kids, like chocolate cricket cookies.

The articles are easy enough to read for kids that read at an easy-chapter book level, not too long for the reluctant reader and packed with information for the more avid reader.

Embedded in amongst all the actual factuals there is a whole lot of information about how to become a missionary and articles on the life and times of real live missionaries, not to mention past missionaries like Gladys Aylward and David Livingston. And a whole lot of information about how you personally can support a missionary, how to pray for them and so on. Also, there are ideas on how kids can help missionaries perform their jobs on the far side of the world.

If you teach kids geography, or history or social sciences then this is a great site for you. If you teach kids about missions then this is a brilliant site for you. Oh and if you can tear away from it then give your kids a chance to have some fun too.

This is a short and sweet post so that you go there and have a look, really check out this site it is a lot of fun.