04 December 2011

Our Second Second Advent

Second of Advent last year was my first full Godly Play session with children. It was held in my living room, with two children in attendance:


Now, a year later, we have been meeting in a church hall, with five children regularly attending. and the pastor comes to greet us (with communion and blessings) at the end of every session.


Today we had a new member join (and we hope to welcome another next week): 


His big sister (already a very experienced member of Junior Church) was rather disappointed to learn that he wanted to work independently during the Response Time, but she rallied well, especially when one of her friends asked to work with her.


I opened the session by introducing the Holy Family figures and changing their underlay from green to purple. I wanted to teach an Advent song, so asked children if they could think of songs about getting ready for Christmas. One child suggested "The Little Drummer Boy", but the most confident responses were "You'd better watch out" and "Santa Claus is coming to town". I conceded that insofar as these are songs anticipating Christmas then we might consider them to be Advent songs. The song I taught, though, was "Jesus is Coming (O yes, I know)" from South Africa.

2 comments:

  1. seethroughfaith20 December, 2011 16:28

    I think they'd still prefer their song ... and as for singing it in parts way beyond most of us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Storyteller20 December, 2011 17:10

    I draw the line at actually singing "Santa Claus is coming to town" in Junior Church, stf. ;) Although if E's Papa were to come help again, I'd love for him and me just to sing "Jesus is Coming" over and over and over in parts (during the feast, for example) and see whether eventually the children felt able to join us. Even if not, I think they'd enjoy listening to it, and have a different perspective on the song.

    ReplyDelete

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