Making St. Elisabeth of Portugal

My latest saint story from The Complete Guide to Godly Play: Volume 7  by Jerome Berryman is about St. Elisabeth of Portugal. She is also the first female saint that I've worked on. (Thomas Aquinas and St.Patrick are the other saint stories I've made materials for.)

For Elisabeth I chose a  slender peg doll that I thought looked a bit more feminine. And drawing inspiration from internet pictures, I made her painted her green and then made her coat from blue felt and her crown from gold pipe cleaner. 

In my other sets, I have always included a wooden cut-out of the saint's home country borrowed from a wooden puzzle of Europe that we own. Wouldn't you know that the Portugal piece is missing?

What to do? If you have been reading this blog for a while, I'm sure you saw this coming. I think that all Godly Play storytellers eventually become woodworkers at some level. While I still can't claim to be a woodworker, I did pull out the fret saw and cut a simple square out of plywood to paint Portugal on. 

I then painted a map of Portugal and outlined it with a Sharpie.

More on the actual story later!

In the next few months, I hope to make Mother Teresa of Calcutta and St. Teresa of Avila as well. We'll see how far I get!

Linked to Keep Calm Craft On at  Frontier Dreams

Mustard Seed Materials Revisited

The Parable of the Mustard Seed was one of the first Godly Play stories that I ever learned. When I was just starting out, I didn't have the money to purchase lots of ready-made materials (which I have since come to realize was a blessing in disguise!). I also was more than a little unsure about making my own things. So I used whatever I could find and for this story, it happened to be Playmobil figures that I raided from my own kids' toy box that you can see in this post. 


I still highly recommend using whatever you find when just starting out with Godly Play. But as you learn more and find out there are specific reasons for certain materials, it is a good idea to slowly replace them. For example, the parable genre always uses flat figures to give the stories a "storybook" feel to them. This is because, as opposed to the Sacred Story genre, the parables are not historical events, but rather stories that Jesus told. 

So when I was planning to tell this story at our children's service in the forest last Sunday, I began to rethink how I could make more pedagogically appropriate material that was aesthetically pleasing. I ordered a DIY kit last year from a certain GP supplier whose name I won't mention. (There are several, so don't try to guess!) It came with wood to saw - I had been hoping for preferated materials - and paper figures to glue onto the wood. I had not been impressed by the drawings and my friend, Helen, went on to say that they were just plain ugly. Helen had been drawing her own figures that I finally saw in Belarus and this inspired me to try my own. 

As I have mentioned before, I am not a woodworker. So I was then off to the craft store to look for a suitable alternative to using wood. There, I found some foamboard and decided to give it a try. At home, I then looked through children's Bibles for inspiration to draw Biblical figures. I drew simple ink drawings and then painted them with watercolors. Then, I took an exacto knife and carefully cut the foam to match the figures. Hours later, I finished and was pleased with the process. Making the materials helped me to consider  and "know" the parable at a deeper level. 


Another change that I made was to buy new felt and make the mustard tree and underlay larger. Part of the power of this story lies in the tiny seed "growing" into an enormous felt tree right before the children's eyes. Again, because of my lack of insight into Godly Play in the beginning, I had made the materials too small. This time, I cut the yellow underlay to be 1 meter in diameter and the tree to fill the space. 

The children were truly amazed on Sunday, but I will write more about that later!






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DIY Pentecost Materials / Godly Play Pfingsmaterial

I hope you all are having a wonderful Pentecost Sunday!  Before I share with you about our celebration here in Berlin, I would like to share with you about the materials that I made to celebrate this special day. Ich hoffe, dass ihr einen schönen Pfingssonntag gehabt habt! Bevor ich von unserem Feier hier in Berlin erzähle, möchte ich ein bisschen von der Vorbereitung teilen.

Last year, I told two stories from Young Children and Worship at Pentecost, because I felt that the Godly Play story might be too abstract for the younger children in my group. But this year, I read through the GP story again and decided that I hadn't given it a fair shot. So, I stayed up until 1 am on Friday night doing this . . . Letzes Jahr habe ich 2 Geschichten von Young Children and Worship zu diesem Fest erzählt, weil die Godly Play Version mir zu abstrakt für die Jüngsten in meiner Gruppe vorkam. Aber dieses Jahr habe ich die Geschichte wieder gelesen und wollte ihr eine faire Chance geben. So bin ich am Freitag Abend bis 1 Uhr wach geblieben um das Material für die Geschichte selbst zu fertigen . . . 

In this GP story, the disciples are represented by their historical shields, which are very interesting to older children. There are also blank shields for the male and female disciples who would have been present, but whose names we don't know. The shields are usually cut using a handsaw. In dieser Geschichte werden die Jünger Jesu mit den historischen Wappen anstatt Figuren dargestellt. Es gibt auch "leere" Wappen für die Jünger und Jüngerinnen, die anwesend waren, aber deren Namen wir nicht kennen. Man schneidet die Wappen normaleweise mit einer Handsäge.

Though I have many talents, sawing wood is not one of them. So I rushed off to the local hobby shop to find something that I could paint the shields onto that would still be attractive and true to the story. Obwohl ich viele Talente habe, ist das Sägen wirklich nicht mein Ding.: ) Deswegen beeilte ich mich am Freitag zum Hobby Shop um eine passende Lösung zu finden. Etwas, das immer noch attraktiv und treu der Geschichte und der Montessori-Pädagogik wäre.

Here are the things that I bought. Red felt for the underlay. A cardboard box to be painted red. (The box for the Pentecost story mimics the gold parable boxes, but it red.) And then I found wooden discs that were probably meant to be used as game pieces in a board game. Perfect for painting the apostolic shields. Ich habe das Folgendes gefunden: roten Filz für die Unterlage, einen Schachtel aus Karton (die Kiste für die Geschichte gleicht dem Schachtel für die Gleichnisse, aber sie ist rot), und Holzscheiben für die Wappen.  

Painting the box red. Der Schachtel wird rot.

After I painted the symbols, I outlined them with a black Sharpie pen and Pitt artist pens. Nachdem ich die Symbole gemalt habe, habe ich den Umriss mit einem schwarzen Edding und Pitt Filzschreibern gezeichnet.

My on-line friend, Leslie, from Thoughts from the Sheepfold, tells me that the storytellers in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd are encouraged to make their own materials in order to know the story in a deeper way. I think this is great advice for Godly Play storytellers as well. I actually didn't know all of the symbols for the apostles and would not have been able to tell a child each of their stories had I not made these shields myself. I used this helpful website as my guide. All of the materials for this project together cost 18 Euros, which is definitely more cost-effective than what is in some of the on-line shops. So, if you are on a budget and have the time, give making your own materials a shot! Meine On-Line Freundin, Leslie, von Thoughts from the Sheepfold, sagte mir, dass die Erzähler bei Kathechese des guten Hirtens immer ihre eigene Materialen herstellen um die Geschichte auf einer tieferen Ebene kennenzulernen. Ich glaube, es tut Godly Play ErzählerInnen auch gut dies zu machen. Ich habe selbst die ganzen Symbolen der Jünger nicht gekannt und hätte sie einem Kind nicht erzählen könnte, ohne dass ich dieses Projekt angenommen hätte. Dabei hat mir diese Webseite sehr geholfen. All das Rohmaterial für de Geschichte hat insgesamt 18 Euro gekostet. Viel preiswerter als das, was man in On-line Shops findet. Also, wenn es euch an Geld mangelt und ihr Zeit habt, kann ich das Selbstbasteln nur empfehlen.

Stay tuned and I will share more tomorrow about the actual story and the children's reactions to it! Morgen werde ich von unserem schönen Fest berichten!




Linked to Keep Calm Crafting On at Frontier Dreams