Bread Communion story

Bread Communion is at the end of November, so we introduced the ritual in this month's first-Sunday Children's Chapel. The Spirit Play training CD that you get when you complete a training has a combination Church Corner/Bread Communion/Guests at Your Table story (Section 3, "Liturgical Lesson Bread Communion") that we modified for the occasion.

I used a fair amount of verbiage exactly as Beverly Leute Bruce wrote it, so I don't feel as if I can share our version of the story here. But I can share the picture!

The preparation for this story was particularly fun for me! I love watercolor on wood, and I love salt dough sculpture. As the materials-in-progress sat on my counter this past week, everyone who came over wanted to pick something up and look at it. I think of intrigue as one of the most powerful catalysts for learning, so this pleased me greatly. And with the whole thing coming it at under $5, it showed that the recommended high-quality materials for Spirit Play stories don't always--or even often!--have to mean high-dollar.

There's an option in the story, which we included, where you pass the smaller basket containing the people, and each child adds one him or herself around the central basket of bread. That was good. I want to look for more opportunities to unfold stories as a group.

For part of this story, too, you introduce the Guests at Your Table boxes and pass around a bowl of pennies for the kids to drop into the box, asking them to envision spreading help, food, and love as they do. They really got into this part! I don't remember how we introduced the boxes last year, but I feel great about this Spirit Play story as a kick-off, and think we'll be using it annually for the foreseeable future.

Serendipitously, I found these beautiful cut-and-fold paper trees, called "Thankful Trees," to accompany the boxes at our family dinner tables.  We had some on our Children's Chapel altar, too, and sent the cardstock print-outs home for each child to cut, fold, and display.