Godly Play

Godly Play SPY-St. Paul Youth Children's Church Nursery

Welcome!  Our church began using the Godly Play program in January 1999 and has now expanded the program into the Sunday School curriculum.  The program is based on work done by Jerome Berryman and Sonja Stewart, using the Montessori teaching method applied to religious education, incorporating many years of research. 

The Godly Play Children's Worship Center concept is an exciting way that children can experience God while learning about God. This approach uses a sensorimotor style of storytelling as a primary means for encountering God, so that God is experienced, not just learned about.  The key to this approach is a worship context for telling and working with Biblical stories, instead of a school environment. Children learn to find the quiet place within, which enables them to get ready to worship "all by themselves" rather than sit in church in imposed silence.  

Key aspects of the program are:  

• Storytelling. Stories are told by a trained adult, using simple and beautiful materials. The pace slows the listener to think about what the story means. Stories come from the Old Testament, stories about Jesus, parables, and liturgical lessons. 
• Room furnishings. Story items, liturgical elements, and art materials are placed around the room. Special attention is given to the placement and quality of items. Children may work with the materials in response to the story. 
• Relationship of the child to God. The program assumes that children have a relationship with God and that they think about the deep issues that face humans.  Teachers listen and interact as the child chooses to talk while working on a response. 
• Liturgical sequence. Children learn greetings, songs, Bible readings, prayer, and a benediction, in a flow that matches our liturgy. 
• Respect for individuals and community. The children work on individual rugs. They are shown very carefully how to respect their own space and the space of others. They learn how they can walk in the room, talk more softly, sit, listen, get things out, and put things away.

For more information or to volunteer or to join this planning group, please call Lois Mitchell at e-mail loismitchell@earthlink.net.