October Prayer Station

Autumn leaves are falling down and covering the ground.  God's love covers us with hope, comfort and grace.  Lift a handful of leaves and say a prayer asking God to cover you with love.

Children of ALL ages love sifting their hands through the leaves and watching them float downward.  What a beautiful, relaxing way to pray!  This may be one of my favorite prayer stations and I know it is popular with many from toddler to adults.

September Prayer Stations

We just began a midweek worship service in my context.  To try and give the service a different feel than the Sunday morning worship services, we decided to plant a few prayer stations throughout the sanctuary space.  Seeing as the month of September come with changing leaves, back to school and lots of other changes, I decided to make the first set of prayer stations centered around the idea of transitions.  At one station, participants are invited to choose and apple or leaf shape and write about a transition they would like God's guidance on.  A big bulletin board is then available for the prayer requests to be hung on.  We also encourage participants to respond to one another's prayers through the board as well.

A second transition themed-prayer station has a series of fall themed mazes available.  Participants are encouraged to focus on a transition they would like God's guidance on as they work their way through the maze.

Pairing Up

A week or two back, the text was about the mission of the seventy.  I decided to focus in on the idea of Jesus instructing the disciples to pair up as they set out to share the Good News.  In my children's sermon, I talked about pairs, where we find pairs, etc. After telling them that this was how Jesus wanted them to go, we wondered why.  The kids had lots of great ideas (safety, courage, easier, friendship, and so on).  We then paired up and took a short little journey of our own to the Prayground, specifically the sensory table.  Inside the sensory table, I had a mix of socks from big to little in all sorts of colors and fabrics.  I invited each child to find a pair of socks and put them on their hands.  We pretended the socks we puppets and practiced sharing the Good News of God's love with others.

Little Green Men

This coming Sunday we begin the long green season of Ordinary Time.  As I was prepping for this week's readings, I found it very timely that our Gospel reading involved Centurions given that it is Memorial Weekend.  This gave me a springboard for a great sensory table and Children's Sermon idea that I hope will not prove too controversial.

Let's begin with the color green.  Ordinary Times is marked with the color green and I think it is great to explain to our youngest worshipers that this helps remember this is a growing time.  We don't have the fanfare or excitement of some other celebratory weeks, but we know we are growing in our faith and understanding.  For this reason, I filled the sensory table with lots of piece of green ribbons, fabric, rick rack and the like.  I have found adding lots of soft material like this helps keep the noise level low.  When there is too much clinky stuff in the sensory table, we have more volume issues.

Now to connect this week's Gospel reading and Memorial Weekend.  Given that this week's reading is about a Centurion, or soldier, and it is also Memorial Weekend, I decided to add little green army men to the bins.  In an effort to keep the violence level low, I did sort through and remove any of the guys with big machine guns.  I hung onto the ones with the metal detectors and walkie talkies.  I was able to cut the guns out of the few fellows as well.

Students will be invited to search through the green bins to hunt for the  soldiers and when they find one, they are encouraged to say a prayer for our soldiers.  They will also be invited to take home one soldier as reminder to continue to pray for our soldiers.

Here are the activity directions:

 We are now in the “Ordinary Season” part of the church year.  This is a season where we hear stories to help us grow in our faith.

Today’s story involves centurions.  Centurion is an old word for soldiers.  A centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant, and Jesus did!

This weekend we celebrate Memorial Weekend.  It is a time when we remember people who have died, especially soldiers.

Look through the green in the bin to find a solider.  Think about how Jesus helped the solider in today’s story.  Pray for our soldiers.

Take home a solider to remind you to keep praying for our soldiers. 

Lent Book for Kids

A couple of years ago I took my love for reading and writing predictable easy reader booklets for kids and applied  it to the Lenten season.  The product is this great little easy readers that you can print off, cut, staple and have available for kiddos to take with them into worship to read and color!

You can access a pdf version of my booklet  by clicking here.

Hope this is helpful for some :)  Happy Lenten season!