a picture of being in the circle

I drew this myself, as part of an exercise for my spiritual director. (Please ignore the torn bit, caused by taping it up and then taking it down to bring home.)

order - everything in its place

Remember Little Sister, who hunted through my attic for "Jesus things"? It wasn't enough for her to work with them in the attic; she wanted to carry them down to the living room as well. And when I look at the photographs I took, one thing that strikes me is order.

Godly Play is informed greatly by the educational methods of Maria Montessori. Montessori found that children are attracted to orderliness from a very early age, less than a year old in fact. She argued that children are sensitive to order (sensitivity is a technical term here, meaning able and eager to learn) during these early years, perhaps especially in their third year (age 2)). This does not mean that after their third birthday they stop finding order attractive, but rather that already by then they should have learned how to put things away, what belongs where, and how to recognize things that are out of order.

clockwise from left: Noah's ark, the Bethlehem stable, the Table of the Good Shepherd
(laid with a paten, a cruet, and bread), an Anglican rosary, and the Holy Family.

I am struck in this photograph by the way that Little Sister has made a differentiation (which is not emphasized in the Godly Play lessons) between the Christ Child's earthly family and the other characters in the Holy Family set - the shepherd, the magi, and the animals. (LS didn't have to decide where to place the "Risen Christ" figure since mine was in England at the time!) Also striking was the way she added several objects to the Godly Play materials. The terra cotta stable was unearthed while hunting through the attic, and is an obvious addition to a nativity scene.

More surprising additions might be the Anglican rosary (which she came across in our living room), and the Chinese triptych. The latter is a souvenir of the Five Oxen, a Tang dynasty Chinese painting. I don't know why she carefully placed it behind her work. Although the triptych is a common form in Christian art, I doubt that LS knows that yet. Perhaps it's because the ox (or cow) is one of the figures in the Holy Family. Or maybe it's just that this, like Godly Play materials, is a beautiful object of a size suitable for children.

adding a pair of elephants to the Holy Family

The last addition is not clear in any of my photographs, but is a set of two wooden elephants. Elephants are not mentioned in any Biblical accounts of the Christmas story... but then again neither is the donkey or the ox! (Indeed, I have seen one or two nativity sets suggesting one of the magi might just as well have ridden an elephant as a camel.)

In the Godly Play classroom, children are encouraged to bring together materials from more than one lesson, making theological connections between stories and seeing how one might illuminate another. But afterwards, the child is always expected to put things back where we always keep them, to maintain the order which is one of the comfortable and reassuring things about our room.

making do - your Godly Play room

If yesterday's post, with the video tour of a "real" Godly Play room, or Sheila's recent post about spacious children's worship areas in Texas left you frustrated or discouraged - I hope this will undo that. Many of us have to "make do" with a space that feels less than ideal. But it's ok to do the best we can!

The minimum I would want is this: The space that is clearly a prepared space. It has been made special. It is both special ("set apart", even temporarily) and welcoming (for us). So if your circle will be made up of children, this should be a space which is set up with children in mind. There is a "threshold" of some sort, so that it is easy to tell the difference between IN the space and OUTSIDE the space. In the space there is a focal shelf, as well as materials for response and for cleaning up. Everything is displayed in an inviting manner (in open baskets, on low shelves if children are present) but also with care, so that it all looks orderly. Everything has a place. And that includes the people - there are mats or cushions or chairs enough for everyone.

You can stop reading right here. This, I believe, is enough.

doing Godly Play in my living room

If possible, the circle of participants will also be surrounded by the lessons and story materials. Again, these should be displayed in an orderly yet inviting way. Take care the first time you set things out, because ideally you will ever after always put them in the same place! Sacred stories should be together, arranged chronologically from left to right, with the core stories most visible and enrichment lessons stored beneath them. Parables are in a clearly different place. And liturgical action lessons are usually located near or beneath the focal shelf.

A piano bench is pressed into service as a parable shelf.

It is not necessarily a problem if everything needs to be set up and taken down each time. I have found that setting up is an excellent way for me to prepare myself for the session. After several months, once children had learned the layout of the classroom, then I would accept any offers of help that came from children who had arrived early. They had already learned to treat the materials with some care, and usually knew where to put them. [If you do this, you will need to think about how they enter the space - what if your threshold is not set up yet? and will you ask them if they are ready as they arrive?]

Can you spot a Parable box?

Don't forget to think about what cleaning supplies will be needed. In a future post I'll write about some optional extras that are nice to have in the room. Cleaning supplies, though, are not an optional extra. In Montessori fashion, we are confident that everyone will be able to clean up after themselves. They may need to be shown how, but they are then encouraged to carry on themselves. In fact, cleaning (or a task such as sharpening all the pencils) is a perfectly acceptable Response Time activity!

These chairs also served to delimit the space.

You don't have to replicate Jerome W. Berryman's diagram exactly! My Godly Play training took place in a room with a slightly odd shape, in which the obvious place to put the focal shelf was not (as is usually recommended) the first place you saw upon entering the room. One of the trainers commented that she was happy not to be using an "ideal" room for training but instead showing us how to "make do". 

Godly Play training classroom

Some related posts:

• Setting up the Room (before and after pictures of our space in Finland)
• Looking into our room
• Our room when we had fewer materials (several photos)
• A diagram of where I put what (in our Finnish room)
• Making do - the focal shelf
• A change of venue - a tale of a lack of preparation and a lot of making do

visit a Godly Play classroom

Remember Sheila's post about her children's first visit to a Godly Play room? Here's a beautiful video tour of a one classroom in Australia.

Isn't that a gift, to show us their room? But perhaps like me you found it simultaneously frustrating. Did your fingers get itchy? I wanted to open that brown box on the Christmas shelf! (I'm guessing it contains "gold", incense, and myrrh.)

change of venue

I had it written in my diary, I'd been reminded, and I'd reminded myself. Nonetheless I managed to completely forget, until Vandriver drove me up to the door of our building, that we had to use a different room for junior church today.

(I've obscured the faces a little)

I was really flustered by the change, by having forgotten, by feeling that the first thing I needed to do was construct big signs directing people from the entrance we usually use to another (unfamiliar) one, by needing to think very very quickly about how to adapt a completely new room to our needs. I was even more embarrassed because seethroughfaith was not with us today, and I was rushing around in front of a new helper who'd never worked with me before. When I went to set up the sheepfold on the focal shelf I realized that one sheep was missing. I don't know where it is, even now. I told the children we'd be reminded of the story, how the Good Shepherd will realize one is missing and have to go off looking for it. But worse, I don't know quite what I did wrong, but somehow as I opened one small box, everything in it spilled out and fell to the floor, including the Holy Family. A chip broke away from the Christ Child, and the father Joseph's head came clean off!

focal shelf with damage and loss

So those were the major low points. There was also a distinct lack of confidence in singing our new "Amen" song (seethroughfaith is often disparaging about her singing abilities, but today we really felt how much she had supported us last time!), and a fidgety-ness after our feast that grew to the point where I gave up on having a prayer time and instead we all played a few rounds of "pass the slipper". I'm sure there's a proper party game called "Pass the Slipper", but this was just a silliness borne of the fact that two children slipped their slippers off and started goofing around a little, and so I grabbed one and started handing it round our circle. We all began to giggle and sent the slippers around and around. Not exactly a sanitary activity for those of us about to receive communion! Our poor pastor - she had made a real effort to arrive in good time only to find that I greeted her with such relief that she thought I was complaining about her tardiness. No. She was in good time. It was just a rough week for us.

But there were a bunch of good moments, too. Perhaps the most unexpected was at the very end, just as we were preparing for communion and blessings. I lit the Christ candle, repeating the words I always use (from the baptism lesson): Once there was someone who said such wonderful things... and He said, 'I am the Light'. The five-year-old girl leaned in and said to me earnestly, My mummy has a necklace, 'The Light of the World'. 

William Holman Hunt (1854)

I meant to ask her mother about it afterwards - is it a reproduction of this painting, perhaps? But I forgot to ask and so I still do not know. Yet it was an encouragement to hear that connection, especially after all the silliness with slippers!

Faces of Easter control card

We have no Godly Play this week, because on the last Sunday of each month we have an all-ages worship service. But thanks to stf, here's a photo from last week:

In the foreground you can see the control card I made for the Faces of Easter (Lenten) materials. This lesson takes us through various important episodes in Jesus' earthly life, from birth to resurrection. [I'm trying out the plaque designs by Juliana Heidenreich. For now, I have used the free sample cards - the German GP copyright notice is printed right on each picture. In the longer run, once I know which pictures I like best, I want to pay for them properly (or ... commission my own drawings?!?).]

Something that had really struck me back in Advent was how easy the Advent plaques were to arrange. If you get them mixed up, it's easy to put them in order again, because the first one shows only one candle, the second two candles, and so forth. The hardest part is remembering to put them back in the basket "backwards" (the first goes in last, so that it is on top for the next time).

But with the Faces of Easter, a person cannot put them in order without remembering which story each picture relates to, and knowing the order in which these episodes happened in Jesus' life. So I made a control card, which I hope will work a little like a puzzle. You can see at least a portion of each card, and should therefore be able to figure out which plaque needs to be on top of which.

I wonder how it works with store-bought Faces of Easter cards. Is it easy to put them back in order?

setting up the room

Before:

 After:

Every time we do Godly Play, I set up the room like this. It is not a chore! I usually find that setting up the room helps me to prepare for the session. And sometimes I have help - one week a child who had arrived early positioned the Holy Family for me. I always have help with putting the furniture away and collecting the materials to be taken home again. 

(For a more detailed description of what is in our room, see the chart in this post and/or explanations of our different "shelves" in this post.)

guest post: flying solo

Written by see-through faith on 13 March

flying solo ....

well not quite as I had a helper over at junior church today, but as the lady who usually leads jr church and who has introduced Godly play there wasn't there I was the leader this week. Her shoes are hard ones to fill, let me tell you, but I - and the kids - had a lot of fun and met with God in great and sometimes unexpected ways!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Godly play, the idea - from my perspective at least- is to make it possible for kids to experience and learn about God in different ways in a setting that is their church - i.e. not the grown ups' place. Ideally you'd have a special room set aside for just that purpose. But we don't live in ideal worlds, and so I love the way Storyteller has gone about creating that special sacred space where it also ok - very ok - to play in the journey to discovering God.

Every Sunday she spends a lot of time hauling stuff in (and out) to prepare the space for junior church. I didn't have time (or energy) to do that - so we ran with a sort of skeleton junior church this week. The boundaries were there as usual and the mats were there and the funny thing was that we started before I knew it because the little kids each found a mat, sat down and waited and suddently it was a go :)

There were two parts that carried most impact for me

Firstly there was the careful changing of the liturgical colours from green to purple (for we are now in Lent). That meant handling the holy family (nativity) figures and explaing simply who each one was. The 'liturgy' we use goes something like this

Here is the Christ child. See how he's holding out his arms to give you a hug. He was born. He grew up. He became a man. And he died on a cross. That's sad. But that's also wonderful in an Easter kind of way. Because now the Risen Christ can extend his arms and hug every one.

The kids really listened attentively to this part -and we looked at the liturgical colours - white (with gold) and red and green - and of course purple. That fitted in well with what they'd done last week which was learn about telling the time in church (i.e. the church year)

Usually they'd then have a lesson. I'm not up to that so I read a story about the miraculous catch of fish with lots of actions and times to reflect. I wonder how they felt. I wonder how many fish they caught. I wonder what Jesus meant by fishers of men. etc.

Then there was the response time.

Again the skeleton set up this week meant they had a choice, but not an awful lot. There was no parable box for example, or the baptism set, and horror of horrors no clay (playdough) or glitter glue. No fuss -simpler choices this week.

This was the second event that impacted me most

The youngest wanted a story - not the fish story again, but the one about the nativity. (a link to what I'd said about the holy family perhaps?) And then she wanted to 'do' the story of the good shepherd herself. She carefully got the things out and set it up and sort of did it herself with me close by. It was fun and lovely ... only then disaster struck. "Where's the bread and wine?" oops! You see I hadn't found those figures when unpacking the boxes (though I found them later) so we improvised (made a loaf out of card and a jug out of shiny paper) and she carefully took the Good shepherd the five sheep and priest at the altar along with all the people. So moving!

We finished with the feast (which I at least once called snack by mistake!) and then I read another story, this time about the good shepherd a different version with 100 sheep but one which put the parable into context. They liked it a lot

As usual we finished with communion and a blessing when the priest (finally) arrived. I couldnt' remember the song we usually sing so we sang thank you for this fine day. And it was a fine day and so blessed!

But I'm very glad storyteller will be back next Sunday, so I can go back to being a participant able to respond to the message in my own way and an adult who is privileged to be present at junior church and whose responsiblities are a) turning up in good time b) toilet /washing hands duties and c) preparing the snack feast (which the parents take turns in providing)!

Our new room, part 3

Our new room means:

• plenty of open space 
• permission to re-arrange furniture (if we put it back afterwards)
• four low benches, which I use as shelving and to define our circle
• windows which let in a lot of light (but aren't distracting)

but:

• it's large and echo-y (hard to walk slowly and speak softly)
• all the furniture apart from the benches is adult-sized

Here's how I'm setting it up for our sessions (I've used gray for furnishings in the room that we don't use). (You can click on the picture to enlarge it.)

.

For info on the various shelves, including the "getting ready" bench, scroll down to the "part 2" post. Our seating mats are Ikea bathmats, a great bargain at €1/mat. The Bible stand is just a music stand which was already in the room. The art materials are currently stored in a little wire trolley - not ideal, but lightweight, easily transportable, and something I already had in my attic.

Edited to add photo (from last week, before the addition of World Communion material):

Publish Post

Our new room, part 2

One feature of Godly Play (in an ideal set-up) is that the participants are surrounded by the stories and language of the church. All materials have a place, so that children can find them easily and so that they know how to put them away. The placement also signals some of the relationships between stories - all parables are stored together, for example.

We have four low benches at our disposal in the room we use. All four are dragged into a large square, to define our circle space. One I have designated as the "getting ready" bench, in the absence of an official door person. If children need a space in which to take extra time to get ready, there it will be. (So far, it hasn't been tested. We haven't needed it or even talked about it.)

The other three benches are used as shelving for lesson materials.

The focal shelf: Although really a circle has no sides, there is still a sense that this is the front of the circle. Here we have the holy family and the risen Christ (you can see a close-up on the "About Godly Play" tab), center stage. To the left is the Christ candle, and underneath it are the materials for the baptism lesson. There is a glaring empty space on the right, which will be filled soon.

On one side of the circle is the parable shelf: So far we have only one parable box, but I have most of the materials almost ready for another one, which will come eventually. At the end closest to the front are the Palm Sunday materials, which we worked with a lot during Lent last year. (This is the "Jesus the King" story, from Young Children and Worship.)

And on the other side of the circle is the sacred story shelf: Here again, there's only one story so far ("The Great Flood", with an ark and two baskets of figures). And mirroring the Lenten materials on the other side of the room, the Advent materials are at the end of the bench closest to the focal shelf.

Then there is a Bible stand (with a basket of Bible storybooks below it), our art materials, cleanup supplies, and a 'prayer and peace' basket.

a Frälsarkransen (Lutheran prayer bracelet), a holding cross, and a peace flower

I think that last basket is the only thing in the room that none of the children have been introduced to. It is just there waiting until it is needed, or wanted, or until somebody "discovers" it and asks about it. 

Our new room, part 1

Last week was our first time in our "new" building, but we couldn't use our normal room. So today was another first, the first time in "our" room. It's only ours for this one time slot, so I bring everything from home.

The process of setting up helped me focus and felt good. Here's the view from the door. I'll post more pictures later, but maybe you can just about see that I've formed a square out of low benches, which become our shelves. The bench on the right of the photo is our focal shelf. The Sacred Story shelf is sort of hidden behind a pillar, but you can probably just make out a parable box in the lower left of the photo.

That parable box held today's lesson: The Good Shepherd. It draws on imagery from Psalm 23 as well as John 10 and Matthew 18 / Luke 15. At the feast we sang the song, "The Lord is my shepherd / I'll follow him always". Then our pastor came to give us communion and blessings, and we ended with "Go now in peace".