Here are five, simple ideas to pray using playdough. This works well with under 5s, but plenty of children, teens and adults would also appreciate this very kinesthetic prayer.
These ideas are those used at the mini-make session at the Hand in Hand conference in January. The dough I like to use is the 4-minute dough from The Imagination Tree. I made lemon, chocolate, peppermint, lavender, glitter spice (with cumin), glitter herb (with mint and coriander), golden caramel (with gold glitter and caramel flavouring) and lavender bake (with lavender essence and poppy seeds).
- Thank God. Make models of things you are thankful for. This could be 3D or 2D, realistic representations or symbols.
- Praise God. Create words to describe and praise God using cutters or freestyle. This is easy using ‘worms’ of playdough and then bending them to make the letters. You could take photos of them and make them into a poem of praise to God.
- Say sorry to God. Make a sculpture or symbol of something you are sorry for then squidge it up. Very cathartic and a lovely way to see what a difference Jesus’ forgiveness makes.
- Pray for people. Make models of people having their prayers answered E.g. Granny now well again. You could leave these on display to remind you to keep praying.
- Pray difficult prayers. Use the action of kneading dough to express your passion when praying.
If instead of play dough you use bread dough, then you can eat it afterwards! I love this recipe which you can use to make pizza, bread, flat bread, dough balls and so on.
See also Bible with dough