Preschool Pray and Play event

This past Sunday we celebrated our Preschool Faith Milestone event and it was a big success!  This event is always one of my favorites and the families always seem to enjoy as well.

We begin our time together with an opening lead by me.  I intro the idea of prayer, teach a song and explain the stations.  We then break the group up into three small groups and send each group to one of three stations.  Our three stations include:

Fun with Forgiveness-at this station children learn a little bit about how when we mess up, God forgives us with the help of bubble popping and dry erase market demo.

Prayer Pouches Make and Take-at this station the children get to make a prayer pouch and select pictures to put inside that they would like to thank God for.

Prayer Posture-After playing some dress-up, children learn that there is no right or wrong way to pray.

Hands up,

Hands folded,

Spoken, sung, standing, kneeling, God hears our prayers all the same!  We also share the story of the prayer pretzel and have a snack at this station.  And of course, we make sure to take a picture for their milestone memory books!

 

After all the stations, we come back together for a closing led by me.  At our closing we learn about the word "Amen" and play an Amen game.  We wrap up by making one last project, a prayer bracelet.  Selecting a bead for each member of their family and stringing them on a pipe cleaner, the children make a tangible prayer reminder that they can take home.  We finish off the bracelet with a jingle bell to represent Amen!

Psalm 23

Clearly we have gotten full swing into fall and the programming year, and clearly, I have not kept up my end of the bargain to blog and chronicle my creativity regularly.  Oops.  It's a good thing I'm big on grace.  ;)

But in all seriousness, I do want to do better at keeping up on this.  That is why I have wrote one of my learning goals in regards to my blog for my Christian Public Leadership course that I am taking.  It is my goal to blog at least three times each month.  And seeing as October is nearly over, I better get busy!

We started our Sunday School year on September 27th and our elementary kiddos had Psalm 23 for their first rotation.  Our theme for the whole SS year is "Light!" and with that in mind, my uber creative sidekick, Lisa, did a super fun opening idea that I feel is worth sharing.

Our opening began in the dark as we talked about how David would have spent a lot of time in the dark while he cared for the sheep.  He may have even done a lot of his thinking and Psalm writing in the dark.  We read through the Psalm, already written out on sheets of construction paper, line by line.  We then spread the children out in small groups with one of the sheets to work on illustrating a verse of the Psalm in the dark.  After letting them struggle for a bit, we offered light, in the form of a single glow stick.  The glow stick did help some, but the task was still a challenge.  We then gathered all the glowsticks (plus a few more) and said that God gives each of us a light to shine, and that by itself is pretty cool, but when we bring those lights together, look how much brighter they become.   That is why God gives us our church family.  When we come and share in our church community for worship, learning and serving, our lights shine brighter together. 

Here are some of the illustrations our kiddos did partnered with some fuzzy little sheep from our art rotation.