Prep for all-age communion

[roisin]

Our church (Baptist) is doing all-age communion at the end of May. (Normally the children are not in church for communion.). As a Sunday School teacher (5s-10s), i have been asked to do some 'prep' with the children in the weeks beforehand.

So, if you are a parent, what would you think I should cover with the group?
If you are a Sunday School teacher, do you have any ideas, suggestions, materials, resources for such a theme?

Thank you

R.

Disclaimer: I'm from a different tradition so this may not be relevant, but FWIW...

I think I'd start by thinking about what it means in everyday life when we eat together. Who do we normally share meals with and why? Who feeds us, and why? (All aimed at getting them to think about sharing and providing food as an act of love...) You'll obviously want to look at the Last Supper, but when DD was preparing for confirmation they also talked a lot about the Emmaus story (Jesus is always with us, but one of the ways in which we can recognise him directly is in the breaking of bread...).

Hope this is a bit of a starting-point at least. I'm sure others have ideas about activities that you could do.

Most under 10s still believe in Father Christmas, I think they're a bit young for communion aren't they?

One thing I have done in the past is to make "wine" by crushing grapes - I used a mouli legumes which you can get from Lakeland, which is good because everyone can have a go at turning the handle, but you could use a blender or juicer. You could theme the session around 'I am the true vine' and do a picture where you have a vine with lots of branches coming off it and have the children draw pictures of themselves at the end of the branches. Then everyone shares the "wine".

In the next session we made bread (obviously you need to have a church kitchen for this!), I brought ready mixed bread dough in and they shaped it and as we baked it we talked about 'I am the bread of life'. Then when the bread was ready (rolls only take 10-15 minutes) we ate together. Or if you don't have a kitchen you could do my favourite sandwich' and all make sandwiches to eat together. Both these sessions revolve around eating together (something very few children in the church I was in had ever done), and we could talk a lot about the Last Supper while we were preparing and eating the food/drink, and why it's important for us as Christians to remember it.

Oh, and the other thing I did was make playdough in various colours and give each child a paper plate to make a playdough version of their favourite meal. While we were doing it we talked about Christmas dinners and other special meals, and about feasts in the Bible, and about the Last Supper and why eating with the disciples was so important to Jesus.