Each week we write a Constant Contact e-mail targeted to young families (and our elected vestry members! We’re sneaky that way…) At first we just listed upcoming schedule changes and that sort of thing, but we decided it was a good forum for opening a window into our classrooms for the parents. So each week I’d send a little e-mail off to the storytellers (we have two Godly Play classrooms) and ask what story they told, etc.
And each week I’d get a lovely paragraph back describing what happened that day! It’s really the best part of my week, and I am thankful that the storytellers are excited enough to write in such detail. These descriptions below are just as we send them. I edit them very slightly (to remove a child’s name or to edit out some housekeeping comment the storyteller might be sending my way) but otherwise they’re exactly as the storyteller reports. I hope you enjoy!
Big Work continues in the Godly Play classrooms! Last Sunday (9/29), here’s what happened:
The younger Godly Play class heard the story of Second Creation: the Falling Apart. Our storyteller told us:
In the younger class, we heard the story of The Creation, Falling Apart. The children listened quietly and remained that way even when I asked the wondering questions. We talked about the “tree of differences” and how it is important to see our differences and how we can become more creative when we see differences. We also prayed for God to help us not only see differences but also similarities. When I asked “I wonder what part of the story we could leave out and still have the story the same,” one child responded that we could leave out the Tree of Forever because “they didn’t eat from that tree.” Our doorkeeper added an interesting wondering question as well asking, “I wonder if that garden is still there?” One child said, “Yes or maybe the garden is in many places.” The children then worked diligently until our time for prayer and our feast.
The older Godly Play class continued hearing the stories that often are part of the Jesse Tree. With Jesse; we remember not only the family of Jesse, which begins a lineage that leads to Jesus, but the many people of the Hebrew scriptures who prepared God’s people for the coming of Jesus. Our storyteller reports:
We enjoyed the life of Abraham, from his call to journey toward the Promised Land all the way to his burial in the cave under the oaks of Mamre. But what is always most captivating about this story is when God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Wrapping the string (that bound Isaac) around my fingers was challenging, and our students spent most of the wondering time wrapping the string around their fingers, without much comment on the story as a whole. We (adults) felt they might be avoiding the hard truth of it, as they kept deflecting questions afterward. But, when I asked what is the most difficult part of the story, one said, “Telling it.”
We read the story in the Bible, they read some in the “Brick Bible,” and then they built the (very difficult) cathedral almost to completion! It was a good class.
