Kidz Korner

Welcome to Downtown Presbyterian Church’s children’s corner. If you are planning a visit with your child, this is the place to find out what we have to offer in the way of Christian education for your family. Though we are small, we have wonderful classes for all ages.

For our littlest guests, we offer a beautiful nursery during the Sunday school and service hours. Children interact with our loving staff in an environment of beauty and gentleness. Children from birth-6yrs are welcome here.

At 9:45 in the second floor classrooms we offer The Way of The Child for children ages 6-11. This curriculum is based on the premise that children are spiritual beings, yet often in the course of their everyday lives they have little opportunity to listen to God and develop a deepening relationship with God.

Six core beliefs about children and their spirituality have guided the development of this resource:

1. Children have an innate connection to God. All children come from God, and God's Spirit is breathed into them at birth. As human beings, they are created in the image of God to be in relationship with God. As they live, learn, love, and experience, they seek meaning in their lives and in the wider world; they seek to develop fully into the beings God created them to be. This resource affirms that God is the source of our being, our meaning, and our loving

2. Children have a natural openness to mystery. Because their imaginations are rich and fertile, they do not have to know all the answers. They are comfortable living in the "in-between." Our culture puts an inordinate emphasis on reasoning and knowing "the Truth"; having the right answers is powerful and is rewarded. Yet right answers often lead to our own control and not to faith in God. This resource encourages the space and place for not knowing, for living into mystery, which is the foundation for reliance on God and faith.

3. Children have an amazing capacity for awe. This capacity for awe is connected to their openness to mystery, their zest for reaching their potential, and their rich imaginations. Awe leads to a life of prayer. Awe inclines us to be present in and to the mystery of God.

4. Children are receivers. They have no difficulty expressing their needs and accepting their dependency. They can easily surrender their self-sufficiencies and allow themselves to be served. Prayer is opening ourselves to receive God's nourishment of restoring, healing, loving, and changing us. Receptivity is vital to prayer, and children are natural receivers.

5. Children love what is real. My children’s favorite stories are the real ones about what I did when I was a child. Their favorite toys were real kitchen utensils, hammers, and garden spades-not the plastic ones from the toy store. The Easy-Bake Oven couldn't withstand the competition of the real oven in the kitchen, and it soon found its home in the attic. Spiritual practices are real, authentic, and lifelong because God is real and our lives are real. Children know this.

6. Children are wonderfully humble. What you see in them is what you get! They haven't yet put on the masks of cultural niceties and rationalizations. Our society encourages mask-wearing, with expectations to conform and with concerns for being good, often fueled by our desires for success. Some of this is necessary. Yet children need to know and accept themselves, to know that God loves them just as they are. Humility is nurtured through this self-acceptance, understanding, and affirmation.

DIFFERENT THAN TRADITIONAL CURRICULUM

There are two basic approaches to Christian education for children -- informational and formational. With the informational approach we teach children about God in hopes that they will develop a relationship with God. In the formational approach we nurture the relationship that children have with God, preparing them to take in the information from the Bible and the traditions of the church. Both approaches are important in a child's life. This resource, being primarily formational, can serve as a balance to informational education, offering a holistic approach to Christian education for children.

Traditional curriculum often focuses on a progression of content that introduces new material in stages. The Way of the Child differs in that it may be used over and over again because the focus is on the experiences the children bring to the community and the encounters they have with God through spiritual practices. The spiritual practices remain constant, but the individual is ever changing. Therefore, the primary content of self-disclosure and God's transforming revelations is constantly changing.

A CONTEMPLATIVE APPROACH

Christians through the ages have found that several fundamental qualities nurture openness to God and help us become the beings God created us to be.

1. Quiet, silence, and solitude. Quiet comes from being calm, tranquil, gentle, and relaxed. The releasing of the noise and movement of our physical selves helps us move into silence. Through silence we can move into solitude, which is the quality of emptying ourselves of preoccupations of mind and heart, thus opening ourselves to God.

2. Imagination. This God-given ability helps take us beyond ourselves. Through imagination we can see, dream, and connect with what is greater than ourselves, which is necessary for a relationship with God.

3. Peace, reverence, and respect. Peace incorporates non-violence, amiability, order, and calm, while reverence and respect mean holding others, objects, and space in high esteem, leading to devotion and loyalty.

In our culture, there is a stark absence of what is needed to nurture and nourish these qualities in children. They are born into and grow up in a world of noise, activity, and competition. They are rushed from school to soccer to piano and dance lessons to drama rehearsals to gymnastics. All the while, TVs and radios blare, telephones ring, computers bong and hum, electronic games and toys squeal and talk.

Our children today have very little experience with silence. This bombardment of noise and activity leaves limited space for the imagination to flourish, for thinking and wondering, for knowing ourselves as unique creations connected to God.

The sessions in The Way of the Child offer children a "time apart" from the noise and bustle of life to learn and experience practices that will nurture their innate spirituality, help them develop a deeper relationship with God, and form vital community with others.

BASIC FLOW FOR EACH SESSION

1. Children enter a prepared room that is simple in style and décor; it is orderly, peaceful, and quiet. They are greeted respectfully and are asked to remove their shoes, as this is a place of peace, a place where we expect to meet the Holy.

2. Children join a leader on the rug and engage in dialogue about what is happening in their lives, listening for the holy moments and the presence of God. A community candle is lighted to be a reminder of the presence of God; and the leader shifts the dialogue to the focus of the session, which can be a short portion of scripture, a description of a spiritual practice, or a short story.

3. After the opening conversations, children are invited to go to reflection stations to engage in reflective activity. These stations include gazing, reflecting on happenings in the world, contemplation at a sand table, art, journaling, and reading. Children are encouraged to work in silence, focusing on prayer, listening to God, and listening to themselves.

4. The leader sounds a chime or tone indicating the time to re-gather in the circle. During this time children have an opportunity to share their thoughts or work from reflection stations and be led in a meditative activity, a closing blessing, and a song.

5. The chime or tone is again sounded, indicating that children will help straighten the room and prepare to leave in the calm, peaceful manner in which they entered the room.

This resource also takes seriously the spiritual journey of the leaders, providing daily exercises that help the leaders practice spiritual disciplines and deepen their relationship with God. While the leaders spend thirty minutes a day with the exercises, they are also familiarizing themselves with the content of the session and preparing to lead it.

To be on a pilgrimage or spiritual journey with children is a privilege. Children may be closer to God because they have not lived so many years at a distance from God. At DPC, we recognize that children have an innate spirituality with a natural acceptance of mystery, an amazing capacity for awe, a vital imagination, a longing to be their unique selves, and an ability to be open to and receive God's love.

Where do we go from here?

For our middle school and high students, we offer a discussion based classroom that explores sacred texts throughout history as well as important fiction that draws upon the growing complexities we face as we continue our journeys through life in the world. The middle school students are currently reading JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit while painting as an integrative exercise in creative dialogue. The high school students are creating a room for themselves on the second floor while discussing Richard Foster’s collection of sacred texts ancient and modern. Both classes meet at 9:45.

Please feel free to contact our Children’s Education Director, Sarah Dark sdarkdpc@gmail.com for any other questions you might have about our children’s programming or if you would like a tour of our classrooms.