Many churches -- especially in the South -- have something like a "Sunday School Round-Up" on Sunday morning the week before classes begin in the fall. There are displays for each class, brochures available, registration tables, small give-away items for the children, and refreshments for everyone.  A variation on this theme that has worked well for me is a kick-off picnic on the Friday or Saturday before class begins. A gathering at the home or in the back yard of one of the Sunday school parents seems more intimate. It creates a relaxed atmosphere for the parents and children to develop relationships that keep them coming to Sunday school during the year.  I send postcards on brightly colored card stock early in August to invite families to the event. I follow up with a poster on the bulletin board announcing the kick-off picnic. And of course, a newsletter and web site reminders are helpful to cover all the bases. I follow up with phone calls  week to ten days before the event because not many people RSVP, even by E-mail.  In the Useful Godly Play stuff section of this site you'll find a copy of the post card I'm sending out next week.

Getting Ready,  Part I

After the children are greeted by the doorperson and find their place in the circle, we take time to get ready for the lesson. This time of becoming quiet and attentive is as important for the storyteller as it is for the children. It can be difficult for adults and children to “enter the story” after a morning of hurrying to get to church on time. Sometimes it can take less than a minute for the circle of children and storyteller to get ready; sometimes it can take as long as ten minutes or more.

Guided meditations are one way to get ready. After the children close their eyes, the storyteller can play a CD of quiet music in the background and lead the group in some deep breathing and muscle relaxation This is the most basic form of guided meditation. But you can use imagery and prayer as well. There are many books that can help you with what to say. Maureen Garth and Maureen Halpin are two of my favorite sources for this type of getting ready.

Both of these women did extensive work leading meditation with groups of children in a classroom setting. Maureen Halpin was a Roman Catholic nun who wrote many lovely books about praying and meditating with children, most of which are unfortunately out of print. (A modified version of one of her meditations, Three Boxes is available on this site.) I will share some of her ideas from time to time.

Maureen Garth works in Australia with public school children and finds that groups of children who participate in simple guided meditations based on images from nature before formal classroom activities like math and writing are more attentive and creative. See children.meditation.org.au for some downloadable mp3 tracks of the type of meditation she uses. You will likely discover that when your Godly Play class is truly “ready,” the quality of their wondering and response time will be deeper.

On the schedule for the coming year, I have listed several other ways of getting ready that I plan to introduce to the children. We will try things like the finger labyrinth, prayer postures, freeform line drawing on connected sheets of computer paper, learning Psalms by heart line-by line, and sign language prayers. A final advantage to an extended period of getting ready is that it allows time for latecomers to arrive without missing the lesson for the day.