Play and Pray Launch

Today our congregation launched the Play and Pray area for children to use during our regular service (we had a sort of trial run back in October). The plan is to have this all through the summer, and then to revisit the question of Junior Church (and/or carrying on with Play and Pray) in the autumn.

Our set-up has been inspired by Margaret's blog post about the Play and Pray area at St. George's Church, Campden Hill, and Carolynn's pages for the Spiritual Child Network.

I received *very* positive feedback from the adults after today's service! Even more importantly, I think the children were also positive about it.

(during the service)

One child wasn't sure what would be available, so brought her own coloring pages (and kindly allowed the other children to use them as well). My hope is to move toward more specifically church-oriented themes for future art projects (as well as encouraging free drawing, which some children also did today). In addition to coloring, the children worked with Godly Play story materials about Jonah, a storybook about Jonah, a collection of small stuffed animals representing animals on the ark, a large poster of Noah's ark, Easter stickers, our "and also with you" flags, and what is more they got to witness *three* baptisms!

I'll write a bit more about today's experience in my next post.

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