I Can Pray

Every week in Sunday school, we stress the idea that prayer is important. On a regular Sunday school morning, we pray 4 times in that one hour of class. We pray before the story, after the story, before snack, and then an open ended prayer at the end for all of the kids to pray about whatever that want. If you ask me, it's only fitting that we do a lesson on prayer.

This story was a collection of verses from Matthew 6. The story takes place when Jesus is sitting on the mountain side preaching to the masses. He gives instructions on things like giving to the needy, fasting, worry, and also prayer. He tells the people to not pray like those in the synagogue or those who are praying for attention, but to pray genuinely with all you are. He then gives the example of the Lord's Prayer that displays the different aspects a prayer has: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and sacrament.

To teach this to a 3 year old, we really focused on the fact that you can tell Jesus everything and that he wants to hear about everything -- big and little. 

For their take home, they made a "spinner" out of 2 paper plates, a brad, and some paper. 

 It does require about 10 minutes of prep work, but it's just cutting.

One the sheet of paper, draw a circle that is the size of the center of the paper plate and cut it out. If you're feeling lazy, here's the circle that I used without the things they can pray on it. 

 On the sheet of paper, I mentally divided it into four sections and wrote in three of the sections things they can pray for, leaving the fourth one blank. I've learned that vague and simple things like "for my family" or "for my school" works best. 

Leave one plate in it's original, whole circle form, and on the other plate, cut out a quarter of the plate. On this 3 quarter plate,  write "I can pray..." and Matthew 6:6, or another reference about prayer.

For them to make it, I had them color pictures of the things they can pray for as well as come up with an additional thing to pray for to fill in the blank quarter.

Once they colored it, I had them glue the circle onto the whole plate. Then, I took the quartered paper plate and brad and assembled the spinner part. 

From bottom to top, it should go whole plate, circle glued onto plate, quartered plate, and the brad.

If you were to make this with older kids, they could write "I can pray.." and the chosen reference. 

One mom told me that her son took it home and keeps it on his bedside to decide what to pray for each night before bed.

Relatively simple yet useable at any point in life as a reminder to pray about everything.

Hannah Prayed

This week's bible story was about Hannah.

For those who don't know, Hannah was Samuel's mother. Her story is a story of faithfulness and trust in God. 

In short, Hannah was one of two wives to Elkanah, and Peninnah was the other wife. Hannah did not have any children, while Peninnah did, and back then, how many children you had was a big deal. For many years, Hannah prayed to God about becoming pregnant. She actually prayed so hard that she could not eat, and another time, she prayed so hard the priest thought she was drunk...Hannah even made a promise to God that if He gave her a son, she would have her child serve God for all of his days. After all this time of praying, Hannah became pregnant, and later, she gave birth to Samuel. Once Samuel was old enough, Hannah indeed turned him over to serve God. 

Even though she was giving up her baby, something she prayed for years about to the point that she was sick over, she still praised God. She still praised him for being holy. You can read her whole prayer in 1 Samuel 2, and more about her conceiving Samuel in chapter 1.

Originally, I had this craft in mind, but I could not find the printable for Hannah. My artistic abilities are not that extensive, so I settled with this.

We made prayer books with things we can pray about. Super easy if you can't tell, and it sparked great conversation with the kids.

On the inside, we had 4 pages with 3 of them being things that they can pray for.

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We put things like my family, my friends, and my church, and had them illustrate who/what they were praying for.

To make the hands, I just traced a rough, slightly larger mitten shape of my hand and cut it out on 5 different colors to make it a little more appealing to the eye. For the words to the book, I uploaded the file here and you are more than welcome to use it in your book. 

Super easy, and a great discussion starter that can also serve as a reminder to both us and them to pray about everything.

xox,

lauren