Godly Play
We offer the Godly Play program on Sunday mornings
We are in the process of developing a customizable program that will be educational, meaningful and fun for children ranging in age from preschool to high school. Help us design a program that best meets the needs of your family.
Sunday program elements can include, but are not limited to:
- Godly Play
- Serving as acolytes to develop a hands-on understanding of church rituals
- Discussion groups, before and/or after Sunday worship
Other activities include:
- Outings with families in San Pedro Faith Consortium
- Heifer project programs
Godly Play: When and Where Do We Meet?
St. Peter’s currently holds Godly Play twice a month on Sundays.
What is Godly Play?
Godly Play is an interpretation of Montessori for religious education. It is a wonderfully creative approach to working with children, supporting, challenging, and nourishing their spiritual development!
In Godly Play, we assume that children have some experience of the mystery of the presence of God in their lives, but lack the language, permission and understanding to express and enjoy that spiritual experience in our secular culture. The program, therefore, seeks to give them those tools by entering into our parables, sacred stories, silence and liturgy in order to discover God, ourselves, one another and the world around us. The stories are told using three dimensional objects that focus our attention on the words we are hearing. While it doesn’t include all the details as they appear in scripture, it does include all that is essential to convey the meaning of the story more as a spiritual than a historical lesson.
What happens in our Classrooms?
There are two trained teachers in each class—the door keeper and the story teller. We sit in a circle to hear the story and wonder about it together. There follows time for activities using the many materials provided: painting, drawing, creating or just interacting with the storytelling objects used to tell the stories. Children use the process of creating to help explore their understanding, not to just produce work. Examples of their work will not come home every week. Finally, there is a simple feast with a prayer and class is over on or about 11:10 am.