Bubbles and Escapism

I've had lots of interesting conversations about religious education recently with friends, teachers, headteachers, students, lecturers and vicars. It's a divisive subject as some people believe it should just be for the private sphere and some for the public square. My work with the Penlee cluster involves a lot of kids work- whether that's Sunday children's groups, Playzone sessions and parties, school assemblies or- most recently- the Easter escape room challenge I've helped design. I think it's a very important subject which has a whole host of benefits which to me outweighs the negatives.

Bubbles

Our escape room style challenge is called 'Tweet from Pete' and has been set up at St Mary's church, near the centre of Penzance, aimed at Year 5/6 (9-11). Participants have to navigate 8 stages, which have puzzles and locked boxes, to find 8 words they need. These words complete a fill-in-the-gaps Easter story they get given at the end of their challenge. We've run 2 sessions for classes so far and have another 3 lined up for the next couple of weeks. I've been struck by the positive feedback we've received from teachers and pupils alike, I think personally I got caught up with what could go wrong and preventing it. Perhaps it's better to focus on what we want to go well and maybe other things will fall into place.

'Tweet from Pete'

Our Playzone chillout sessions on a Friday afternoons are something I've been helping out at since I started my internship here. A couple of weeks ago we had our pancake themed session which meant cooking them, flipping them, running with them and most importantly: eating them. The best bit, at least from my perspective, was the leftover pancakes, bacon and maple syrup the who let the dads out session on saturday was treated to. Pictures were taken and sent to friends to induce jealousy and dads lamented the fact we couldn't have it every week.

Snapshot of me recording one of my lent songs

Please continue to think about pray for our ministry at St John's with children. Derath from St John's and I are considering resources we may start to use, including Scripture Union's 'Bubbles' materials. It's a good resource but assumes you have a reasonably large group to begin with sometimes. With mothering Sunday this week Derath is leading our all age talk in place of a kids group, I've sent off a card to Mum, hopefully it's not too cheesy but I'm sure Tim's and Reuben's breakfast in bed will make up for that (hint hint brothers).