This is a unique back-to-school activity for your family that will encourage you to capture moments of prayer, learning and growth. Based on the idea of the school locker and how it starts the year empty with everything shiny and new. Then through the course of the year, we fill it full of the things we have learnt and the “stuff of growth” By the end of the year when we come to empty our lockers we discover memories that show how much we’ve grown and changed through the year. We get to look back at important lessons and moments of challenge. In the same way, we encourage you to create a family faith locker where you make a box and use some of the resources in the pack to help capture how you have all started the school year, the things you have concerns about, prayer requests and answers to prayer. By the end of the school year as the summer holidays start you can sit together and look back at all that God has done in your lives this year – chat it through and laugh about the things you’ve made and memories made.
Starting with the locker itself, encourage the children to decorate an old cereal box or something similar that will fit A4 size paper – alternatively, you could simply buy a box 🙂 Each child then fills in the form for their class details and all the things they like or are concerned about going back to school. Through the year you can complete the family devotions each term with the specific activity for that season. All of the forms and crafts can be kept in the locker and any answers to prayer are written and kept in the box. At the end of the school year, you can empty the locker, just as you would at school, and see together just how God has moved in your family and how you have each grown and changed.
For those of you leading Churches / Children’s clubs, we have developed a complete All Age Back to Education Service which works in tandem with the Faith Locker and includes the complete service which you can edit and adapt as required, as well as cards for a prayer activity and postcards which you can laminate / Shrinkydink and attached to the children’s bags.