The Complete Guide to Godly Play

Revised and Expanded: Volume 4

Jerome W. Berryman, Cheryl V. Minor, Rosemary Beales

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780898690866
• eBook ISBN: 9780898690873
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Godly Play® approach helps children explore their faith through story, to gain religious language, and to enhance their spiritual experience through wonder and play. Based on Montessori principles and developed using a spiral curriculum, the Godly Play® method services children through early, middle, and late childhood and beyond. Revised and expanded, The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 4, offers new concepts, new terminology, new illustrations, and a new structure that stem from more than 10 years of using Godly Play® with children across the world. Thirty to forty percent of the text is new or revised, including a new lesson, revised Introduction, and a full Appendix.

Lesson 1

The Mystery of Easter

Lent, the Mystery of Easter, and the Easter Season

How to Use This Lesson

•Enrichment Presentation—This kind of lesson goes over the same material in a Core Lesson but from a different angle or in a more detailed way.

•Liturgical Action Lesson—Lessons about sacraments or traditions of the church, which primarily use ritual and symbol to make meaning.

•This Enrichment Lesson in Volume 4 of The Complete Guide to Godly Play adds to the Core Lesson for Lent called “The Faces of Easter.” The cross in this lesson will remind the children of the cross that Jesus saw when he first looked up into the faces of Mary and Joseph, and of his journey to the cross—a journey we all take with him every year during the season of Lent.

•As the first lesson in Volume 4 of The Complete Guide to Godly Play, it is usually presented at the beginning of Lent.

•It is part of a comprehensive approach to Christian formation that consists of eight volumes. Together the lessons form a spiral curriculum that enables children to move into adolescence with an inner working knowledge of the classical Christian language system to sustain them all their lives.

The Material

•Location: Lent/Easter Shelf Unit

•Pieces: Reversible purple and white bag, six puzzle pieces that form a cross (purple on one side, white on the other), a wooden tray

•Underlay: Use a rug or plain felt underlay

Background

Lent is the season when we prepare for Easter. These six weeks are a solemn time, overflowing with meaning, when we view life from the perspective of our existential limits and the sacrifice of Christ. This lesson gives an introduction to the relationship of Lent to the Mystery of Easter as well as how Easter overflows into the season of Easter.

There are several possible uses for this lesson:

•Present it on the Sunday before Lent.

•Present it at a gathering of the congregation on Shrove Tuesday (the night before Lent begins). If you do this you might consider enlarging the material so it’s easier to see in a large group setting.

•Present it as part of a liturgy designed for children on Ash Wednesday. This liturgy might include this presentation, a demonstration of how the ashes are made each year (by burning some of the previous year’s palms from Palm Sunday), a song, a prayer, and then the imposition of ashes.

•Present it on the First Sunday of Lent, after focusing on the change of seasons.

–Use The Holy Family presentation (Volume 2, Lesson 3) to change the focal shelf color from green to purple.

–Then tell “The Mystery of Easter.”

–The next week (the second Sunday in Lent) you can either present the first two of “The Faces of Easter” (Volume 4, Lessons 2 and 3), or begin the four-part series called “The Greatest Parable” (Volume 8, Lessons 1–4).

Notes on the Material

Find the materials for this presentation on the second shelf of the Lent/Easter Shelf Unit, directly under the lesson called “The Faces of Easter” (Volume 4, Lessons 2–8).

A bag, which is purple on the outside and white on the inside, holds six puzzle pieces, which, when assembled, make the shape of the cross. One side of the cross is purple; the other side of the cross is white. It is much more than a puzzle with pieces that fit t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Lesson 1: The Mystery of Easter
• Lesson 2: The Faces of Easter I
• Lesson 3: The Faces of Easter II
• Lesson 4: The Faces of Easter III
• Lesson 5: The Faces of Easter IV
• Lesson 6: The Faces of Easter V
• Lesson 7: The Faces of Easter VI
• Lesson 8: The Faces of Easter VII
• Lesson 9: The Crosses
• Lesson 10: The Legend of the Easter Eggs
• Lesson 11: Jesus and the Twelve
• Lesson 12: The Good Shepherd and World Communion
• Lesson 13: The Synagogue and the Upper Room
• Lesson 14: The Circle of the Holy Eucharist
• Lesson 15: Symbols of the Holy Eucharist
• Lesson 16: The Mystery of Pentecost
• Lesson 17: Saul Changes
• Lesson 18: Paul’s Travels and His Letters
• Lesson 19: The Holy Trinity
• Lesson 20: The Part That Hasn’t Been Written Yet
• Appendix A: The Foundational Literature for Godly Play
• Appendix B: The Spiral Curriculum for Godly Play
• Back Cover