The Growing Faith Foundation exists to put children and their families at the heart of the Church of England. Growing Faith Learning Hubs therefore emphasise the importance of children and young people’s voice. A key focus of our project has been encouraging children to enter into Bible stories and use creative arts to retell them. During workshops, Tony will often read out children’s poems and encourage children to ad-lib when acting out a story. By doing this, children grow in confidence using their own voice and can learn about the Bible stories in a more impactful way. Several of the churches we have been working with have also displayed the children’s poems and artwork in their church (see photo below), which the local community are invited to see, again elevating the children’s voices.
Children’s poems and artwork on Peter walking on the water with Jesus, next to matching stained glass window.
Elijah Workshop
Tony planned a workshop for mental health week looking at the story of Elijah (1 & 2 Kings). See the full plan in the Resources section of the website.
Tony talked the children through Elijah’s storyline (Elijah was a prophet, Mount Carmel, Elijah escaping, Elijah collapses & Angel attends to him). The children acted out different parts of the story, playing Elijah, the prophets of Baal, fire, the queen and the angel. They were then split into two groups and went to two different stations. At one station, the children were encouraged to write a poem based on the Elijah story (see photos below). Tony read out some of his own Elijah poems to give them some ideas. At the other station, the children were talking about friendship and its positive impact on our mental health. They worked together to create a mosaic and wrote down who their friends were (see photo below).
Elijah poems & Friendship artwork
