First: Welcome the children into the session. Say how happy we are to see them and how important they are for the class. The volunteer will introduce the book LEARNING HOW TO PRAY - A BOOK OF PRAYERS FOR CHILDREN by Elsa Rossi followed by the Lord’s Prayer and ask who would like to choose and ready one story for us.
Second: The Spiritist worker will introduce the “Raffle Box of Prayers”. In your turn, each child will open the box, choose one prayer and read it loudly in order all the friends could listen it. We will do it until all the kids have their chance to choose and read a prayer.
Third: Play the activity called ‘hang man’ to introduce the topic of the day.
The volunteer will prepare a bag with 5 pieces of paper which will contain the following words:
* Responsibility
* Naughty
* Choices
* Obedience
* Bad Behaviour
The volunteer will ask if they have behaved in this way….. (use the words above). Ask them to also give some examples.
Fourth: Pictures
The volunteer will place 10 pictures and the followings signs (V) (X) on the table.
Each child will be asked to assign one sign to each picture.
The green tick sign (V) should be used for the pictures with good examples /behaviour.
The red cross sign (X) should be used for the pictures with bad example/behaviour.
The volunteer will help the kids to reflect upon each picture, following the topics described below:
* The reason for the sign to be used
* The behaviour showed in the picture
* The decision made behind each behaviour showed in the picture
* What results they might have according to their choices, based on the picture.
Fifth: Activity - Each child will receive one sheet of paper where they should draw an example when they had a good and a bad behaviour.
They can use stickers.
The volunteer can use the following questions:
* What happened for you to decide to have such bad/good behaviour?
* How did you feel?
* What happened afterwards?
* How do you think you could do it differently/better from now on?.
Sixth: Parable of The Prodigal Son - The children will be asked to tell the parable to the volunteer.
See slide show attached PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON.
Seventh: Story and Puppets’ preparation - The children should prepare one story to exemplify a bad and a good decision made and the consequences.
Eighth: Puppets’ Theatre - They will present the story for the rest of the class.
Ninth: Healing Theatre - Prepare the kids for the healing time. Put two chairs at the centre of the room and invite 2 children at each time to sit down. The volunteer will say to each one how they should behave. One child will have to follow good behaviour during the healing time, such as close their eyes, sit down still in the chair, put their hands in the laps, keep quiet, etc. On the other hand, the volunteer will ask the other child to behave badly during the healing time and do as follows: keep his/her eyes opened, move in the chair, talk during the healing, etc.
Two volunteers will be asked to help in this exercise: One of them will be the healer and the other will be the Spirit Benefactor. The healer volunteer will pretend of giving healing to the child when the Benefactor Volunteer appears.
In the example of the good behaviour the Benefactor will come, get closer to the healer and also will help during the healing process. However, the Benefactor will come close to the child with a bad behaviour, will ask him/her to keep quiet and behave well. But, the Benefactor will go away as the child hasn’t collaborated.
Explain that it also happens with all of us during the healing therapy.
If I am a good boy/girl the Benefactor will be there helping us, but if we have a bad behaviour they will go away feeling very sad as they couldn’t help.
Tenth: Closing prayer - One of the children will do a closing prayer; encourage the children to volunteer for this task. If they don’t want to collaborate we could say we will follow the letters of the alphabet. The child’s name that starts with the letter A will do the opening prayer this time. Everybody will have the chance to collaborate.
Closing prayer
Class suggested being suitable for: 1st cycle (7 to 8 years old).
Spiritist volunteer: Juana Castro, London, linked to The Spiritist Psychological Society.