Is the material safe for children to work with?

• Look for sharp edges, wood splinters, loose wicker, or rattan in baskets.

 

Is the material durable?

• It is better to spend more for materials that will last. For example use fadeless art paper buy better quality mounting board.

 

Will the material be easy for the storyteller to use?

• Will the wooden people and animals stand on felt and are they sanded enough not to snag surfaces? Is the ark too heavy to lift?

 

Is the material appropriate for children in several developmental stages?

• Will the smiling cartoon like face appeal to older children? Are the trays a size that children can carry by themselves?

 

Is the material the best you can afford?

• Are you showing the children the value and importance of the stories we tell by using high quality storytelling materials? We use our best in the church furnishings, vessels and vestments. Must we settle for less than our best for materials used by and for children?

 

Is the material appealing enough that children will want to work with it?

• Does the wood grain invite touchings? Is the fabric colourful and clean? Do the materials look as if they have been lovingly made?

 

Will the materials distract from the story itself?

• Are the children more interested in the glitter on the Star of Bethlehem than they are in the idea that the star led the Magi to the newborn baby?

 

Does the material limit the listener's point of entry into the story?

• Is the material open-ended enough to allow for children in different stages of faith development to enter into the story and use it to find meaning in their lives?

 

Does the material evoke the mystery of the Presence of God?

• The use of beautiful liturgical and storytelling materials helps children's attention to what they might otherwise find ordinary. In parables, sacred stories, and liturgy, God speaks directly to the heart, a heart which is deeply drawn towards beauty. Beautiful materials can draw us into faith experience that transcends words.

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The Godly Play Classroom

Why is the Classroom so important in Godly Play?

Creating a sense of sacred space has to do with children's special sensitivity to space/place. It has something to do with the physical place or room in which Christian spiritual education takes place. But it is just as much about the mental effort to create a sense of sacred space even in uncongenial places.

This can be a problem in the wrong kind of space: airless, high windowed classrooms aren't great places for learning at primary school; the best kindergarten teacher has a hard time if all she has is adult sized tables and chairs (thank you Maria Montessori for that!).

If the space is congenial to spiritual work it can be a blessing, a spiritual strength. Unlike adults who can become rather numb to the space they are in, children 'read' the space with every part of themselves, and will hear what it is saying far more loudly than most of what you say to them.

In Godly Play, some of the qualities that help the room support children's spiritual sensitivity to the unspoken lessons of 'sacred space' include that it evokes and encourages

1. Care, (clean and warm)
2. Beauty,(selected and crafted materials/furniture- not cast off toys etc)
3. Accessibility (e.g. if you are pre-literate and only 3 feet high)
4. Focus (invites closer looking and becoming familiar rather than being 'fun and distracting')
5. Quiet, calm, order; and a certain absence of 'stuff' and chaos

All this not only helps the child and her psychology, but simultaneously 'says' lots to them about who God might be for them and us (the theology part). In a good space, the children will also learn some of their most important lessons about community and their place in it - because it conveys things about our relations with the children, our attitudes about them and their needs and gifts.

It has been interesting to note how many people visiting the Godly Play room in Trumpington who speak about respect for children in all kinds of ways, and yet can't get their heads round the fact that children really use that room- paint and carpet and all those things on the shelves 'out' all of the time – surely children would really ‘mess it up'. So there's often a ‘lower' view of the child than we'd consciously adhere to – but revealed in the space we make for them and their spiritual growth. (The fact that the adults worship in the main Church building, but the children gather in the vestry/parish room/elsewhere is perhaps the clearest sign of what we often really think about children's capacity and need for rich spiritual experiences – i.e. it doesn't really matter for them, yet.)

When the spaces we work in with children 'say' wipe down surfaces and 'loadsafun' to children, they accurately read these messages and will care rather less about looking after that environment and its things, and even the ideas explored in it. Furthermore, a 'loadsafun' message will foster an expectation of being provided with entertainment, and judging 'Church' (even as adults) on the grounds of how 'good' it is at delivering. When the space invites other moods and qualities (1-5 above), children will respond in perhaps more useful ways to their openness to spiritual engagement: to being 'ready'.

So the emphasis on sacred space in Godly Play is about concerned attention to:

• The child's PSYCHOLOGY and spiritual strengths,
• The THEOLOGICAL message the environment relates about who God is and what the Church might be, and
• Has all kinds of PEDAGOGICAL potential too, to assist or impair the kind of learning we hope to occur there – a place where children feel safe and secure enough to learn, question, remember, make connections, and to take risks – play.

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