This is a guest post by Mina Munns of the super Flame: Creative Children’s Ministry blog. If you’ve not seen it, take a look! It’s full of fabulous ideas for prayer and stories and faith suitable for families, children, including under 5s and adults.
If you’ve never heard of Play dough mats then you have a treat in store! Play dough mats are interactive, colourful, fun and easy to use. They are also a great way of helping children to reflect as they work the play dough with their hands. This particular mat has been designed to help children to pray in a kinaesthetic way and could easily be used independently or as a shared family activity.
You will need:
- A play dough mat, printed out and laminated (this helps with cleaning off the playdough and also means that you can use the mat over and over again)
- Play dough*
What to do:
Talk about prayer as being a chance to speak to God about anything we want to and that we don’t always have to use words. Look at the pictures on the mat and discuss things we might say thank you to God for, things we might want to say sorry for and things that we might want to ask Him to help us with. Encourage children to use playdough to make symbols of things they want to pray about and to put them on top of the appropriate picture as a sign of their prayer. The option is then open to share prayers if that seems right. You might want to finish with a short prayer lifting God the symbols you have made and then end with a big ‘Amen.’ As children get used to using the mat they will hopefully start using it independently. Be prepared to be amazed by the depth of their prayers!
You can download the play dough mat play dough mat prayer.
*See here for a great four minute recipe