First: Opening prayer - The Spiritist Volunteer will bring the book LEARNING HOW TO PRAY - A BOOK OF PRAYERS FOR CHILDREN by Elsa Rossi. The following story will be told:
Prayer to Keep Me Healthy
Dear God,
My Grandma always says that our greatest treasure is our health.
So my God, I want to ask you to always keep me healthy, so that I can grow up strong and able to help everyone who has more need than I.
I will be able to do this when I grow up.
Please God, help me to always be healthy.
The Spiritist worker will introduce a box of prayer after the prayer and will ask for one child to volunteer himself/herself to read the prayer for the class. Please ask the child to say his/her words as well, as to complement the opening prayer.
Second: Welcome the children into the session. Say how happy we are to see them there and how important they are for the class. Play hot potato game with the children. When the music stops the child who is holding the hot potato ball will be asked to answer what they do to help their family at home.
Third: Sing songs together; get the children to remain standing but in a circle.
http://www.sermons4kids.com/jesus_is_my_best_friend_1x.pdf
http://www.sermons4kids.com/jesus_is_my_best_friend_1x.mp3
http://www.sermons4kids.com/jesus_loves_the_little_children.pdf
http://www.sermons4kids.com/jesus_loves_the_little_children.mp3
Fourth: Get the children to sit down into a circle. Yell the children the story called: The story of Zen
Our body – gift from God
We are spirits. We received from God our physical body as an instrument for our progress, whilst we are in Earth. We need to look after it by eating healthy, keep up with our hygiene, health.
Examples: eat fruits and vegetables; brush our teeth and hair, shower, exercise.
Fifth: Ask the children:
* What’s the lesson we can learn from the story?
* What’s our physical body?
* Do our bodies look the same? Although we all have a physical body, each one has a unique body as we are all unique in God’s eyes
Sixth: Get the children to stand up and follow the questions below:
* Can you point a part of your physical body? Do you know how it’s called? Get them to point to different parts of their bodies.
* What have our arms been created for? What can we do with our arms? We can use our arms to carry things, to hug our friends and family.
* What about our fingers? Can you show me what we can do with our fingers? We can use our fingers to be creative, such as colour papers and crafts, use fork and knife to feed ourselves, hold an object, etc.
* What about our eyes, mouth, nose? Let them to think that all parts of the physical body are important.
* Who gave us our physical body? God did. Our bodies are a gift from our Divine Father for our learning and growth.
Seventh: Get the children to stand up. Ask them to form a circle. The Spiritist volunteer will tell them what they need to do and the children will need to repeat after him. Please make sure the Spiritist volunteer does the activity as well to engage the children into the task.
* Walk (please make sure you walk very slowly)
* Run in the same spot
* Jump
* Waive
* Shake legs
* Shake arms
* Shake legs and arms at the same time
* Smile
* Open and close eyes
* Stretch
* Shake head from side to side
* Sit down
* Stand up
* Sit down
* Stand up
* Hug the person on the right
* Hug the person on the left
* Jump with both feet together
* Laugh out loud
Eighth: Get the children to do small actions that involve their arms, legs, feet.
Ask them: What can we do with our arms? We can waive bye-bye (get all children to wave bye-bye).
Ask them: What else can we do with our arms? We can touch our feet (get all children to touch their feet).
Ask them: What can we do with our fingers? We can shake hands (get all children to shake hands).
Ask them: What else can we do with our fingers? We can brush our teeth (get all children to pretend they are brushing their teeth).
The Spiritist volunteer could also get the children to give some ideas and talk about the following parts of the physical body: mouth, knee, forehead, cheek, nose, ear, etc.
Ninth: Get the children to say what we should do to take care of our physical body (brush our teeth, eat well, drink water, pray, meditate, etc).
Tenth: Get the children to help cleaning the room; 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.
Extra activity.
Closing prayer
Class suggested being suitable for: Kindergarten (5 to 6 years old).
Spiritist volunteer: Carolina von Scharten, London, linked to BUSS - The British Union of Spiritist Societies.