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.

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. 

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!