The World in Our Hands - Learning to Pray for Others

Sunday February 17th was our nineteenth session together. This week we covered Unit 3, Chapter 12 "We Pray for Others". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as ways to pray for others. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion, the activities worksheet, and craft activity.

Packing Light: If you just want the activity sheet for this session, you can find it here. It has a dot-to-dot activity, decode activity, and coloring activity.

We really didn't have an activity with the whole group, so we went directly to our room. We started off with our usual discussion about Mass. The children noticed Father was still wearing Purple, and that we are still singing those 'old' versions of the Holy, Holy, Holy and the Our Father. They miss singing the Gloria, and we talked once again how the Gloria and Alleluia are 'put away' during Lent.

We tried to remember those "7 service things" from last week. We didn't really remember too many of them... but at least they remembered that they existed (and that there were 7 of them!).

We talked again about the petitions that we hear after we listen to the Gospel during Mass. We tried to remember the kinds of things that the reader lists. We remembered ones like praying for the sick and the Pope and the soldiers. We definitely remembered the "Lord, hear our prayer" that we say.

Then we created a "prayer web". I then asked the children to volunteer ideas of ways we could pray for others. As each child volunteered, she or he was handed the ball of yarn... then he or she would wrap the yarn loosely around his/her hand. So as we went around - which was in whatever order the children were ready to volunteer - we created a "web" with our prayer ideas. So then I reminded them:

See, we are all connected. We remember that God is the Father of everyone in the world, so we need to care about others because they are like our brothers and sisters.

The children had great fun with this and wanted to be able to give 2nd and 3rd ideas so they could really be connected!

So then I asked if anyone knew how we could remember who we should pray for? I told them it is hard sometimes, and I forget how to do it too sometimes. So I asked them to hold their hands like they were praying. Using the "5 finger prayer" that I found at sermons4kids.com, I walked them through it:

What finger is closest to you as you hold your hands that way?

"Thumbs!"(in unison)

Since the thumb is closest to you, you use it to remind you to pray for people who are close to you. Who are some people that are close to you?

"Parents" "Brothers" "Sisters" "Grandma"

...and so we continued for each finger... the children were quite engaged with this activity! When we finished, I handed out the coloring page and asked them to label each finger on the page with the "who we should pray for" reminders and then they colored them and decorated them. It was great to see them working together to figure out what hint they should write on each finger.














Next week we will be having a unit 3 review.

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, definitely go for the online activity for this chapter
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the prayer card activity at We Believe.
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan