Quite a few people have asked me to share about the Family Activity Workshops I’ve been doing, so here we are!
I’ve been doing workshops for families for a number of years, and have developed a model which I’ve found help inspire and encourage families as well as giving them activity ideas to do faith at home together. I’ve found it really works well to get families together to think about and do some faith at home stuff as doing it together means we are more likely to put it into practise at home.
The workshops are hosted by a church with a good-sized space to work in and they provide refreshments either before or after the workshop. The host church needs to provide at least two people to help set up and down the stations before and after the event. As a thank you for hosting, I’m offering a one-hour session with children’s church and/or church leaders to discuss how faith at home can be supported in their church, including looking at aspects of intergenerational church.
We usually hold two workshops, each for 10-20 families (depending on space), one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Churches are welcome to charge families, and most have chosen a ticket price of £10 per family, although realistically the workshop is worth more like £25 per family.
Each workshop lasts approximately 2 hours and is aimed at families with children mostly aged 3- 11 years old. (If there are a lot of families with under 5s, it’s helpful to have one workshop specifically for them and one for older families as then the activities and timings can be suitably adapted.)
Families start by playing some games to explore faith at home in the Bible, what we mean by faith and discovering some of the things they already do which are growing their faith at home. They then have an opportunity to try out lots of creative ways to explore a Bible story together. Families are encouraged to stay together and given time to review what they enjoyed and might like to try again at home. I bring all the kit and set it up before families arrive, so they have maximum time to use things like giant Jenga, loose parts and playMobil to explore Bible stories.
We then come together to think briefly about prayer and what that looks like, before trying out more activities to do prayer at home together.
Families have the option to buy one of two sizes of take-home party bag:
1 Standard take-home bag costs £5 and contains £10 worth of resources and activities to help them continue at home what they started in the workshop (including a sticker activity book and a few resources ready to use at home)
2 Deluxe take-home bag costs £10 and contains £20 worth of resources and activities to help them continue at home what they started in the workshop (including a sticker activity book, a set of GodVenture52 cards and some other resources ready to use at home).
The cost of the workshop is £300 + 50p/mile for mileage from Leamington. If 30 families attend, paying £10 each, churches will only need to pay £50 for the event. Ideally, host churches open up the event to other local churches and thus involve more families.
This is the first of a series of family activity workshops, with others becoming available later this year on developing family faith rituals and meeting God through play.
If you’re interested in booking a workshop or wanting to chat about how this could work in your context, please get in touch.