Godly Play

Age 3 through 5th grade

Sundays, after the 9 AM service until 11 AM in the classroom wing (Sept-June)

Begins September 15, 2024.

Register your child for Godly Play.

Godly Play is a program of Christian formation and spiritual direction for preschool and elementary school aged children. Godly Play allows children to hear the sacred stories and traditions of Christianity in a way that invites them into the story with their intellect, emotions, and physical selves. 

We tell stories sitting in a circle using physical items such as moving wooden figures through a tray of sand to tell stories of the Israelites traveling through the desert, or using cards with simple symbols for each day of creation as we talk about what happened in the beginning.

As we tell the stories, we build a simple yet profound vocabulary that helps children makes sense of and talk about their spiritual and religious experiences. At the end of the story, we ask open ended questions that invite children to consider big, existential questions as well as small, tender aspects of themselves. We welcome reactions and insights of all types: playful, joyful, confused, wise, silly, hurt, sad, and more.

Children then have time to make their own choices about working with the story materials themselves or working with art materials. This gives them time and space to absorb the story and allow it to work in them.

This approach establishes a foundation of these stories in the early years, expands the number of (and complexity of) stories as the children get older, and allows room for questions, skepticism and doubt as well as wonder.