Once there were two preachers who were going to use the parable of the wise and foolish builders as part of the all age bit of the service. 

The wise preacher found lots of lovely images online and created a wonderful PowerPoint presentation to accompany his telling of the tale.  The foolish preacher took a plastic tray, a flat piece of rock, some 'sand', some wooden building bricks and a watering can.

The wise preacher regaled the congregation with the exploits of the two builders.., even having the audacity to accuse the foolish builder of laziness or slipshod work (neither of which is in the original story), before announcing the moral of the tale.

The foolish preacher invited the children forward, tried to encourage them to build two identical 'houses' from her bricks, one on the rock, one on the sand.  A child was entrusted with watering can to  simulate rain... and the uppermost block toppled from the house on the rock, while that on the sand stood firm.  After a hasty rebuild of the house on rock, the intensity and direction of the rain was switched to undermine the house on the 'sand'.  No neat moral lesson to deduce from the tale, but rather 'I wonder what happened next'?  What if the wise men helped the foolish man to build anew house?  And a new 'moral' that sometimes we mess up, but Jesus gives us each other to help us start again...

Three times in the last decade or so I have attempted this.  Three times the house on the rock has collapsed under 'light rain'... is someone telling me something?

* The 'sand' I used today was sawdust made by adding water to wood-based cat litter, as I didn't have any sand.  In the past I've used both play sand and builders' sand with the same effect.