Ministries

Sunday School – Godly Play

[The following appeared in the Chatham Courier newspaper in September 2003]

Saint Paul's Episcopal Church Introduces Young Children to a
New Play-based Sunday School Curriculum

As Saint Paul's Episcopal Church of Chatham welcomed back its youth for the 2003-2004 Sunday School year, Kindergartens through third graders began to participate in a new Church School program using the Godly Play curriculum, an imaginative method of presenting scripture stories to children.

The goal of Godly Play is to teach children the art of using religious language-parable, sacred story, silence and liturgical action-to help them understand and find meaning in what happens in their daily lives. Godly Play is a time of worship. Each "lesson" is a worship service in itself, modeled after the Eucharist; it includes a story, time for wondering and response, prayers, feast and goodbye blessing.

Two teachers meet with each class, and a high-school student serves as a "greeter," welcoming each child individually to the classroom and later assisting them with their journals and art projects during the response time. "We greet them to let them know this is a special place," says second/third-grade teacher Chris Johnson, as Katherine Guerard welcomes each child into the classroom one Sunday.

The Godly Play curriculum emphasizes the idea of community and family, and part of its mission is to develop a sense of awe, wonder and reverence within each child. It complements Saint Paul's mission, which reads, in part, "Through word, prayer and action, we will uphold and nurture our parish family, our communities and all of God's creation."

Godly Play was conceived of and developed by Jerome Berryman, an Episcopal priest, author and teacher; and it has been used in the classroom for over 20 years. Berryman was influenced by the work of Dr. Maria Montessori, MD to create this oral, visual and kinesthetic approach to children's worship. It recognizes the fact that children use different senses-seeing, listening, touching-to learn in their own way. Allison Pishko, director of Christian education at Saint Paul's, adds that the program takes into account the fact that we learn at different paces and at different times. Indeed, sometimes children seem to learn in spite of their teachers. As Montessori wrote, "Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference." (Education for a New World.)

Pishko explains that during class time, using props, "We tell a story related to Christian teaching. Each week, we use a different kit, which is very tactile, to go along with the verbal storytelling process." There is no strict order in which the lessons need to be taught. These lessons include the Mystery of Christmas, Exodus, Jonah the Backwards Prophet, People of God, and the Holy Family. The accompanying hand-crafted manipulatives include boats, arcs and whales, timelines and church calendars. Each unit is housed in a handmade basket with a woven lid. Artisans, carpenters, and craftsmen in Berryman's home town of Ashland, Kansas, are responsible for creating these beautiful wood and bronze-cast classroom resources.

In the Kindergarten/first grade classroom, the same lesson is taught each week, but at a different level than in the 2/3 class. The storytelling time is limited to about five minutes, taking into account the shorter attention span of younger learners. During one lesson, while second and third graders pondered the abstract question of whether time has a beginning or an end, children in the K/1 class eagerly counted the weeks to Christmas and were amazed to find out that there were 52 weeks (such a big number) in a year.

In class, when one of the older students, Teddy, was asked what he thought about this program, he said, "Good. I just like learning this stuff."

Pishko says that much thought went into the selection of this new curriculum. She says Godly Play has been used effectively in many other Episcopal churches and that children have responded eagerly to the program. Next year she hopes to introduce Saint Paul's pre-kindergarten group to the curriculum. Sunday School students in the fourth grade and higher will continue to follow Living the Good News, lectionary-based, liturgically centered, Christian education curriculum in the Episcopal tradition.

Saint Paul's is committed to providing meaningful Christian education to its members. For more information about the Godly Play Program and what it may have to offer for your children, call the church office at 973-635-8085 or visit Saint Paul's website, www.stpaulschatham.org.