Friday, July 6, 2018

Barefoot at Church

When I'm not telling Godly Play stories at church or at school, I am a part of a team at our school that plans worship services for the students. Although we are a public school, in Berlin we are allowed to invite students to worship services specifically for the school, because religion is taught as an elective in the public school system. 

For our last service before the summer break where everyone is preparing to embark on a different path, we told the story of Moses and the burning bush. We asked all the bewildered (and delighted!) students to take off their shoes . . . 


Then, we highlighted that God is with us wherever we go and on every sort of path. To bring it all home, we set up an obstacle course with every sort of "path". Rough and smooth ones, fun ones and difficult ones. 


The children loved it, and wanted to go around multiple times!



The idea came from a friend of our pastor named Dieter Altmannsperger, who has written a book called "Barfuss die Bibel entdecken" ("Discovering the Bible Barefoot"). It's a wonderful book that I wish we had in English!


I love being a part of making church a welcoming place for children where they can play with God and discover new things!

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Easter Club Week 4

I realised that I never posted on the last week of Easter Club. Never mind that it's already July! 

Our story was about the Good Shepherd. Here you can see a couple of girls playing with the story during Response Time.


One of our main projects in Easter Club was making prayer labyrinths. In order to help the children understand how to use them, we made a life size prayer labyrinth on the floor. Then, during Response Time, we allowed the children one at a time to go into the room, hold a purple tea light candle and walk the labyrinth, taking as much time as they wanted and needed.


In the center of the labyrinth was a basket of wooden Easter eggs with Christian symbols on them for the children to look at and ponder. 



 Response Time was filled with creative energy! Below you can see how prolific the children were in creating things and making meaning out of the things they heard and experienced.










If you'd like to see the other 3 weeks, follow this link to Week 1.