Kids Alive! 19 July 2025

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Major Julian Watchorn Published weekly by The Salvation Army United Kingdom and Ireland Territory. The Salvation Army is a Christian church and registered charity. The charity number in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 214779, in Scotland SC009359 and in the Republic of Ireland CHY6399. ISSN 1363-5662. 3 TheBadGuys2 and Ed’s Bit 4–5 KA! JAM 6 Bumper Bible Breakdown 7 Kiddo 8–9 Giggle in the Middle 10 myFirst Camera 3 Competition 11 Creative Corner 12–13 KA! World 14–15 Your Space 16 Patch’s Pals Percy the Penguin

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a

Hey there, readers! We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this issue of Kids Alive! If you would like to get your own copy of Kids Alive! delivered to your home every week, why not ask your parents or carers to take out a subscription* for you? Every week, Kids Alive! includes a cartoon Bible story, a competition, puzzles, jokes, comic strips and topical activities and articles for you to enjoy.

*A subscription costs just £4.33 a month (or a one-off payment of £52). This subscription offer applies in the UK and Republic of Ireland, with 51 copies delivered over 12 months. Please note that different prices apply to Europe and international orders.

EDITOR Cara Mott

DEPUTY EDITOR AND KA! JAM CO-ORDINATOR Ibukun Baku

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jacob Adams

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Philippa Martin

PROOFREADER Chris Horne

CONTACT US Phone Office – 020 7367 4910

Territorial Headquarters Switchboard – 0845 634 0101

Email kidsalive@salvationarmy.org.uk Post 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ

FOUNDERS Catherine and William Booth

INTERNATIONAL LEADERS General Lyndon Buckingham and Commissioner Bronwyn Buckingham

TERRITORIAL LEADERS Commissioners Jenine and Paul Main

AThe Bad Guys 2 Bad

IN CINEMAS SOON

fter years of being incredibly naughty, how hard can it be to become a good guy? That’s a question that the Bad Guys must figure out the answer to! The Bad Guys is a team made up of five mischievous animals, led by Mr Wolf. In the first film about their adventures, The Bad Guys, this team of naughty outlaws decided that they were finished with being villains. They’d done some truly bad things in the past, but now they wanted to become good guys instead!

However, the Bad Guys have realised that it takes a lot of work to change from being a villain. For a start, it’s really hard to get a job. Mr Wolf wants to work at a bank, but every time he goes for a job interview, he finds out it’s at a bank that he once robbed! Nobody seems ready to trust the Bad Guys, or to really believe that they’ve actually changed.

In fact, there’s one squad of criminals that really hope the Bad Guys are still supervillains. They’re called the Bad Girls, and they’re the Bad Guys’ biggest fans. Led by a snow leopard called Kitty Kat, the Bad Girls are planning their own villainous plot – and they want to force the Bad Guys to help them!

Are the Bad Guys really Good Guys now? Can villains actually become heroes? You’ll have to watch The Bad Guys 2 to find out!

You can watch ‘The Bad Guys 2’ in cinemas from Friday 25 July

This film is rated PG, which stands for parental guidance. Parents or carers can read more about this rating at bbfc.co.uk before deciding whether it’s suitable for their family.

The Bad Guys are trying really hard to be good guys, but people aren’t ready to give them a second chance after their past mistakes.

There are plenty of people in the Bible who made mistakes and needed a second chance too! Jesus spent time with people who were considered ‘bad guys’, including tax collectors or people who broke laws. Even Peter, who was one of Jesus’ disciples, denied knowing him three times! Thankfully, Jesus loved and forgave them all.

In fact, Jesus’ whole purpose for coming to Earth was forgiveness. Humans aren’t perfect – we all make mistakes, but because of Jesus we can be forgiven by God for any wrong thing that we do. That doesn’t mean we can go around doing what we want and just saying sorry, though! Just like the Bad Guys, we have to try to do our best all the time and be truly sorry for any mistakes we make.

Stories Jesus Told

The Rich Fool

Check out your Bible –Luke 12:13–21

God’s Greater Than Gold!

Have you ever read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien? One of the best moments in the book is when Bilbo, the main character, meets a dragon called Smaug within the depths of the Lonely Mountain. Smaug is curled up asleep, and he’s lying on a pile of gems, jewels and gold!

For Smaug, this mountain of treasure is the most important thing in the whole world. We can be a bit like Smaug, can’t we? We can care so much about the things we own that we start to think they’re more important than anything else.

Perhaps the most important thing in your life is a collection of cuddly toys, the money in your piggy bank, or a shelf full of books! The truth is that as great as these things are now, they won’t last for ever. So rather than focus on what we have, we should make the most important thing in our lives the very person who’s given us everything we need. The very person who cares for us, loves us and wants us to join his family – God!

The rich man in this week’s Bible cartoon hadn’t realised that he was missing out on knowing God. He was so focused on being rich, but the things he owned were worth nothing compared to being a Christian! You might have some amazing possessions, but the most important thing in the whole world is being in God’s family. Have you become a Christian yet? It’s far greater to know God than to have a storehouse full of grain, or a mountain full of treasures.

Jacob Adams Read the comment on the right about how God is better than anything else

Never-Ending Treasure

Here’s a list of different things that people might think are really important. Can you figure out which of these things won’t last for ever and which of these things will? Draw a line from each of these different things to link them to the correct box!

Bumper Bible Breakdown

Did you know the Bible isn’t one big book? It’s actually 66 books put together to tell one big story of God’s great love. Join us as we look at each Bible book and discover why God made the world, what went wrong and how in the end God saved the world through his son, Jesus.

Year One

For three years, Jesus spread the good news around Judea – that he was making a way for people to know God. In the first year, Jesus spent a lot of time preparing for the work he was going to do. He began to gather a group of close friends (known as disciples) to follow him. These disciples included a fisherman called Peter and a tax collector called Matthew. Jesus also began to perform spectacular miracles. He turned water into wine, healed Peter’s sick mother-in-law and healed a paralysed man. But Jesus made it clear he was around to do so much more than just heal people – his mission was to forgive people for the wrong things they’d done!

However, Jesus’ mission wasn’t an easy one. Some people, such as a group called the Pharisees, made it clear they didn’t like what Jesus was saying. Jesus’ cousin, John, was even thrown into prison!

Join...

KA! JAM is the coolest Bible activity club around. As a member you’ll go on amazing adventures through the Bible learning about Jesus. Each activity sheet is filled with lots of great stuff about being a Christian. You’ll also receive our mini-mag, Chatterbox which is filled with jokes, games and much more. And to top it off, there are loads of awesome prizes to be won!

To join KA! JAM and complete the Bible activity courses online, go to salvationist.org.uk/kajam.

Or if you would like to receive the postal version, simply fill in the coupon below.

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To join KA! JAM just fill in the application form and send it – along with two first-class stamps – to: KA! JAM, 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ. Applicants must be between 7 and 17 years old to join.

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Boy or girl: Do you attend a church, and if so, which one?

I, (signature)

apply for membership of Kids Alive! Jesus And Me. I understand that joining KA! JAM doesn’t mean I have joined The Salvation Army and that it is not a free subscription to Kids Alive!

PLEASE USE BLOCK CAPITALS.

Unbelievable Animals

Forget cats and dogs – there are some animals that are so strange that it’s hard to believe they actually exist! Over the next few weeks, we’ll discover some of the wackiest!

Komodo Dragons

Komodo dragons are the largest lizards on the planet. However, they’re very hard to find in the wild, as they only live on Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands. Although Komodo dragons don’t breathe fire like a dragon in a story, they have a very poisonous bite and they’ll follow their prey for miles!

Hello, readers, i’M PATCH AND I’VE GOT A PROBLEM I THINK YOU MAY BE ABLE TO HELP ME WITH. i’VE LOST A VERY IMPORTANT OBJECT SOMEWHERE IN THIS ISSUE. WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO HELP ME FIND IT? i HAVE A CLUE OF WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE HERE.

You might know the date that Valentine’s Day is on or the name of the current king of the United Kingdom. However, there are also plenty of strange facts we reckon you haven’t got stored in your noggin! So here are a couple of random facts that you definitely (and by definitely, we mean don’t really) need to know.

If you could choose to play any sport on the Moon, which sport would you pick? On 6 February 1971, an astronaut called Alan Shepard decided to play golf. No one apart from the mission director knew that Alan was planning to do this – he had to sneak the golf balls into space by hiding them in a sock!

When you want to get someone’s attention, you might call out their name. Believe it or not, bottlenose dolphins do the same too! Every bottlenose dolphin has its own name, which is made up of whistles. Dolphins know each other’s names, and will use them to call out to their friends and family!

What happened when the shark became famous? It became a starfish!

Fit the five given words into the grid correctly to reveal a new word in the darker blue column. Some letters have been inserted to help you. Clue: Very slow animal.

Why did the fox chase the rabbit? It fancied some fast food!

I should have never glued a piranha to my boomerang... ...I just know it will come back to bite me!

Wordfit Wordfit PLUM ALSO

ATOM

H PAGE PUZZLE PAGE PUZZLE

D

How do wolves eat their dinner? They wolf it down! A C E

Explore this week’s ‘Kids Alive!’ to work out which pages these images are taken from

Crossword Clues

across:

3 Snake-like fish. 5 Orange root vegetable. 6 PE equipment, for example.

Crossword Clues

7 Large marine mammal. 8 Shy or nervous. 11 Angler’s pole. 12 1/60th of a minute. 13 Almond, for example.

down:

1 Truthful statement as opposed to fiction. 2 Game ending with scores level or a tie. 3 Volcano of Sicily, Mount _ _ _ _.

4 Mythical story or fable. 6 Young cat. 9 Drizzly fog. 10 Gaming cubes. 11 Circle.

What did the wolf do after its jog? It huffed and puffed!

What do you call a snake that builds things? A boa constructor!

What snakes are found on cars? Windscreen vipers!

What’s a fox’s favourite dance? The foxtrot! mr wolf mr piranha doom ms tarantula diane

Find the ‘Bad Guys 2’-related words in the grid

tiffany fluffit chief misty pigtail mr snake mr shark kitty kat

Why do sharks live in salt water? Because pepper makes them sneeze!

Why are snakes hard to trick? No one can pull their legs!

MyFirst Camera 3 Competition

ave you ever had a day that’s so brilliant you don’t want to forget it? Perhaps you went to the zoo with your family, went to the beach on a sunny day, or rode a sledge down a hill in the snow! If you’ve had the most fun day ever, then it makes sense that you’d want to remember it. That’s where having your own myFirst Camera 3 comes in handy!

The myFirst Camera 3 is a camera that’s designed for young photographers. Not only does it take photos, but it can also be used to record HD (which means ‘high definition’) videos. It even comes in a protective sleeve – which might look like a giraffe, dinosaur or kitten! This means that you can take your myFirst Camera 3 on any wild adventure you go on, and you can film every exciting moment! For your opportunity to win your own myFirst Camera 3, answer the question below and email your full name, age, address and answer to kidsalive@salvationarmy.org.uk Remember to put ‘myFirst Camera 3 Competition’ in the subject box. Your entry needs to reach us by Friday 15 August when the winners will be chosen. You can also enter by filling in the details on the coupon below and posting it to: myFirst Camera 3 Competition, Kids Alive! 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ.

Name:

Address:

DESIGN YOUR OWN ICE CREAM

What would your perfect ice cream be? Would it be a blob of vanilla ice cream in a cone, coated with colourful sprinkles and so much strawberry sauce that it looks like an erupting volcano? Or would it be a tower of chocolate, mint, toffee and bubblegum-flavoured ice cream? It’s National Ice Cream Day tomorrow (20 July), so to celebrate one of the best treats out there, design your very own ice cream using the cone below. Remember to tell us what flavours you’ve chosen too! If you’d like to share your artwork with other readers, email your drawing to: kidsalive@salvationarmy.org.uk. Make sure you write ‘Design Your Own Ice Cream’ in the subject box and give us your full name, age and address. Alternatively you can post your drawing to: Your Space, Kids Alive! 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ. One last reminder, if you’re sending by post remember to fill in the details below so we know who you are. We send a gift to everyone whose drawing we publish, so don’t miss out!

Name: Age:

Address:

Postcode:

Living a healthy and an active lifestyle and caring for your physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

International Moon Day

Since it’s the summer, it doesn’t get really dark outside until late at night. But if you were reading this issue of Kids Alive! in the early evening of a winter’s day, then you might be able to walk over to your bedroom window, pull open the curtains and look up at the stars.

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If it was the perfect night for stargazing, then you might see more stars than you could possibly count –an endless number of them, glittering in the darkness. And you might also see the Moon, full and bright, 238,855 miles away from Earth – but it might look like it’s so close that you could reach out and touch it!

What is the Moon?

? ? ? ?

The Moon is a satellite, which means that it’s an object that travels around our planet. It’s about four times smaller than Earth, so it’s actually pretty huge! It also has a massive impact on our planet, even affecting the tides of the ocean.

20 July 1969

On 20 July 1969, after years of looking up at the sky and wondering what it would be like to go to the Moon, humans walked on it for the very first time! Tomorrow, on 20 July 2025, 56 years after the first Moon landing, people all around the world will be taking part in International Moon Day.

20 July 1969

This is a day for people to learn about the journeys that people have taken to the Moon, and to get excited about what the future of space travel might look like!

One Small Step

Did you know that the first humans to walk on the Moon were part of a mission called Apollo 11? They were Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin. After Apollo 11, there were five more Moon landings. However, the last one was all the way back in 1972. There are plans for more missions to the Moon, though!

Get Inspired

You probably won’t be able to travel to the Moon any time soon, but you don’t need to go to space to get to explore it! Stargazing is an activity in which you look up at the night sky and watch space.

Stargazing Tips

Here are a few tips to help you with your stargazing adventures…

Find somewhere dark to stargaze. The best places are far away from city lights, so why not plan a trip to one of the six International Dark Sky Reserves in the UK? These are parks that get really dark at night and are great for stargazing. To find out more, check out nationalparks.uk/dark-skies

You can just use your eyes to stargaze, or you can use a pair of binoculars or a telescope. Don’t panic if you struggle to see anything at first, because it can take around 30 minutes for your eyes to get used to being in the dark! If you’re struggling to see, then a red-light torch can help!

Use an app on a phone to help you to understand what you’re seeing. SkyView Lite is an awesome app that we’d recommend trying out.

Keep a journal where you can record amazing things that you see. You could draw your own picture of the Moon, or write down the number of shooting stars that you spot.

If you went stargazing tonight (19 July), you’d see that the Moon is in its waning crescent phase, which means it isn’t quite full. However, you’d have a good possibility of seeing two planets – Saturn and Jupiter. If you wait a week to go stargazing, then you might also see the Perseids meteor shower, which will begin on Wednesday 23 July!

To find out what phase the Moon will be in when you next go stargazing, check out moonphases.co.uk/moon-calendar

Discover the wonders of space on International Moon Day!

To celebrate National Smile Month, Abigail, aged 7, added this fantastic face to the smile. We love how much colour she’s put into this picture!

Cool Colou ri ngs

H a p p y

Check out this super Skateboarding Colouring sent to us by George, aged 10. The skater looks so cool in their awesome skatewear!

Mary, aged 9, created this colourful and detailed face for National Smile Month. It certainly looks like a very interesting character!

B i r t h d a y t o y o u !

To see your name and birthday printed in a future issue of KA! email your full name and date of birth to kidsalive@salvationarmy.org.uk

19 July

Joshua – age 13

22 July

William Bartle – age 9

Look at the incredible details Tomas, aged 11, has added to the hair in this Science Colouring! What a fantastic and creative idea! Great work, Tomas!

Check out this cool comic that was drawn and coloured by Ruby, aged 8. We think she’s done such an awesome job and Patch thinks so too!

This is fab! My favourite bit is the ‘dun, dun, dun’ ending! Great work, Ruby!

G e t I n

T o u c h !

The Kids Alive! team loves to hear from its readers. And guess what –other readers love reading your news! So why not get in touch? You can email or post your own colourings, drawings and letters. Or you could ask your Sunday school, church or corps leaders to email us or write to us with any news about the fun stuff you’ve been doing at your church or corps.

Email: kidsalive@salvationarmy.org.uk

Post: Kids Alive! 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ

Byron

Age? 9.

Favourite colour? Blue.

Favourite food? Chocolate.

Favourite sport? Football.

Favourite bit of Kids Alive!? Colouring.

Favourite Bible story and why?

Jesus feeding the 5,000.

Favourite TV programme? Match of the Day

What do you want to be when you’re older? Footballer.

Pets? Cat and cockatiel.

Hobbies? Football and colouring.

Tell us a joke. Why did the man with one hand try to cross the road? To get to the second-hand shop!

What special skill or talent do you have? Football.

Tell us something interesting about I love reading Tom Gates.

the downside to living in such a cold place...

at all, patch.

...is that you aren’t able to grow flowers in your garden. does that bother you, percy?

but my garden hasn’t completely Gone to waste.

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Kids Alive! 19 July 2025 by The Salvation Army UK and Ireland - Issuu