Godly Play - The Exile and Return

Our Godly Play story for this week was (drum roll please)...

You'll find the script for the story in the book Young Children and Worship. And in addition to reading the story, you may find it helpful, as I do, to watch someone else tell the story online. Here's the link to the story I watched.

As usual, I made my own story materials (so much less expensive than buying them!) and here's what they looked like:

You'll have a better idea about what the materials represent after reading and watching the story. But the white tray with sand inside is our desert box, the wooden peg people with felt clothing are the characters in the story. The two wooden blocks (snagged from my kids' blocks bin!) each represent a city, the two strands of blue yarn represent two rivers and the adjoined paper clips represent chains.

For more Godly Play ideas and inspiration check out my Pinterest board!

Godly Play - The Ten Best Ways to Live

The kids and I had a great time telling the Godly Play story The Ten Best Ways to Live.

You'll find the story script in the book Young Children and Worship but before making my own story materials or telling the story to my kids, I find it helpful to watch someone else tell the story online. Here's the link to the story I saw.

After watching or reading the story, you'll see that telling it requires a heart-shaped box and some pieces that go inside that, when put together, look like a heart. Each piece represents one of the ten commandments.

The official Godly Play materials for the heart and commandment pieces (as seen in the video) are made of wood and have etchings on them. But using a heart-shaped cardboard box I got from a craft store and cutting the commandment pieces out of felt was a lot more inexpensive! Here's what the individual pieces, representing each of the ten commandments, look like:

The other materials I used to tell this story I already had on hand from previous Godly Play stories. For more on those materials, including more Godly Play ideas, check out my Pinterest board!

Godly Play - Noah

Our Godly Play story this week was Noah from the book Young Children and Worship. The book has the script, but, as always, I like to watch the story being told before I begin preparing to tell the story myself. Here's the link to the story on YouTube.

Although I usually try to make my own Godly Play materials, I couldn't come up with an easy, inexpensive way to make an ark with lots of animals. So I splurged on this Noah's Ark wooden play set on Amazon...

...and it was totally worth it!

My kids, 4 and 7, play with this all the time. And I love that, just like in all Godly Play stories, they are stepping into the stories in Scripture, allowing the Holy Spirit to teach them, to speak to them, to move in them, as they play.

Godly Play - The Story of Creation

By far, my VERY FAVORITE thing we do in our homeschool is Godly Play. I've written a post on it before, but in a nutshell, Godly Play is a method of learning about and engaging with God and Scripture with young kids. We usually tell one Godly Play story per week, and this week's story was...

As usual, I made my own materials. You can buy beautiful, quality Godly Play materials online (just google Godly Play materials : )) but they're spendy. So with just a little felt and a couple of hours one evening, I made the creation materials myself!

Of course there are seven days in the creation story, so each day is represented by a medium-sized gray felt rectangle with felt cut-outs that go on top. Here's the one for Day 4.

The story I told was, as usual, from Young Children and Worship by Sonja M. Stewart and Jerome W. Berryman.

There are videos of the stories being told on YouTube and I almost always watch the story I'm preparing for, even before making any materials. The story script is in Young Children and Worship, but it's much easier to see the story played out when getting ready to not only make your own materials, but tell the story yourself. Here's the link to the YouTube video I watched.

After I tell a Godly Play story, I usually give each of my kids, 4 and 7, a chance to tell it too. Throughout the week, we'll read the story account from Scripture itself at some point and we'll continue to talk about the story as we go along with life. Sometimes I'll google activities or even just coloring pages related to the story and do those with the kids too.

If you haven't explored Godly Play yet... go, go, go! : )

Discovering Godly Play

One of the very best things I've happened upon so far in homeschooling (actually, in parenting!), is something called Godly Play.

My friend Shera told me about it as we were watching our friend Reagan open baby gifts at her shower one day. In the local church Shera's a part of, they use the Godly Play approach to teaching their church's children about God. It's rooted in Maria Montessori's ways of teaching and uses hands-on story-telling to invite children into the story being told, to wonder about the story, all in hope that the Holy Spirit will move in each child in a personal, meaningful way.

A few months ago we started using Godly Play as part of how we learn about and relate to God. And it's been a wonderful addition to our homeschool, in fact, to our lives. I encourage you to read all about what Godly Play is here. But one of my favorite Godly Play stories so far is the story of The Last Supper.

These are some of the materials I used to tell this story. The Godly Play manuals (which you can purchase on Amazon) clearly tell you what materials you need for each story, and there is a script for each story too. Also, there are videos on YouTube in which Godly Play teachers show us what it looks like to tell the stories.

For this story, we needed the twelve disciples, Jesus, a miniature table, a miniature cup, a miniature plate, a lamb and purple and white cloth (I used felt). There are people who make and sell Godly Play materials (you'll find them on eBay). But I chose to make my own because it was a lot less expensive... and really not that hard.

For the disciples and Jesus, I ordered Wooden People off Amazon, then cut out some felt for their clothes, glued them on, and tied some string around the waist. The miniature table, cup and plate we already had as part of E and R's dollhouse. The lamb we already had as well.

The story creates the opportunity to teach about, and take, communion with your kids. I told the Godly Play story before my husband went to work so that he could be a part of taking communion too (especially since this was the first time our kids had taken communion, or that we had taken communion as a family).

This was such a special morning for our family. I highly recommend Godly Play!