I teach with a co-teacher and we have been teaching 8-10 year olds (3rd/4th Grade U.S.A) in Sunday School for the past five years. I wanted to share with others something that the Lord has used in our class and has been a blessing to be a part of each week.
In our class we have a prayer time each week before we begin our Bible lesson. Our heart’s desire in doing this each week is to enable the students to not be afraid to pray publicly. As adults it can be intimidating to be called on to pray publicly. Our prayer is that our students will take what they learn in class and be children who pray privately and publicly. To help students become more accustomed to praying in public and also to aid them to pray privately we teach them to praise God, thank God and make our requests to God. As they learn the discipline and joy of prayer early in life, it’s our prayer that as they serve the Most High God they continue to be faithful prayer warriors.
How we implement prayer in our class is to have a prayer time each week before our lesson begins. To prepare for this time we have prepared cards for the students to select. There are 3 categories that we prepare. Praise, Thanks and Request cards. On the praise cards there are examples of how to praise God. “I praise you because You are our comforter. You comfort me when I am discouraged.” On the thank you cards we have examples of things we can thank God for. “Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.” On the request cards we have examples for requests. “Please help our pastor to preach Your Word or Please help our leaders to make wise decisions.” (We keep it to simple sentence prayers so that we have time for all the students to participate.) We have several cards to choose from. Each week as the students get the idea of praise, thanks, and requests they become more comfortable to use their own prayers of praise, thanks and requests. When they first arrive we remind them to choose their cards if they need cards and if they already know what they want to praise, thank and pray for they don’t need to take the prepared cards. The cards provide something to help the students who are scared to pray out loud. In the beginning they are participating by reading off their card when it’s their turn. It’s our prayer that as they continue each week it becomes natural for them to pray out loud and not be focused on the others around them. (In past classes we provided a piece of paper that had the three components with a blank for the student to fill in to help them pray their own individual prayers. The sheet said: I praise you because…..Thank You for…..Please help……) An index card or a blank piece of paper can work well too. As our students grew and became more accustomed to doing this each week they did not need the cards. We provide the cards each week for possible first time visitors and for the students who still want to use the cards.
As we pray each week the Lord will gives insights how to encourage and help the students to grow in their prayers. For instance, in our class we noticed a trend that most of the students when praying without cards would say, “I praise you because you are holy.” That is an awesome characteristic to praise God for! What we wanted the students to realize is that as they pray that it’s important to remember what that are saying means. God is perfect and without sin. We don’t want to pray the same things every time we pray. Prayer is talking with God and having a relationship with Him. We don’t say the same things over and over when we talk to our friends. It’s important to encourage them to praise God in new ways. To help them do that we encouraged them to think about how God helped them that week. If they were sick and God healed them, they can praise God as the one who healed.
When it is time to pray as a class we get on our knees. We explain that we get on our knees to show respect to God. Jesus knelt as He prayed Luke 22:41 We explain to them that there will be a time of silence so we can quiet our hearts before God. As we quiet our hearts before Him if He shows us anything that we have done that is sin against Him we need to ask Him to forgive us. (A time of confession so we can be clean before God as we come to Him in prayer.) After that moment of quiet the lead teacher begins the prayer time and the students take their turn and the c0-teacher closes out the prayer time. This time has been such a blessing for us as teachers. We have seen even the shyest students pray something very simple in our time of public praying.
When we implemented this in our class we did not allow it to be an option if students wanted to pray or not. This sounds very rigid but if you allow them the option some won’t ever try. (If the child is a visitor we tell them this is what we do in our class and show them the cards and if they want to participate they are welcome.) We encourage the students that this is a safe place to pray. We all came to Sunday School to learn more about God. This time of prayer is helping us to learn how we can pray together. When we are at home we pray privately but there will be times that we need to pray together. We encourage them to speak so that we all can hear. Example: When a person says, “Thank you God for healing my Grandmother”, we all can say thank you to God in our hearts for what He has done.
Even if it might seem as though some students are going through the motions by taking their turn and reading their cards, seeds are being planted in their hearts. As the student reads : “I praise You because You are the Bread of Life; Your Word feeds my spirit, or I praise You as the Prince of Peace, You give peace to me when I am upset” these Biblical truths are being planted in their hearts.
This was shared for the purpose of encouraging and helping anyone with a need for ideas how to teach your students to pray. As with all circumstances in the classroom the teacher needs to be in tune with the Lord’s leadership. What works well in our class may not work the same in another. God is faithful to help you teach your class the important discipline of prayer and He will enable you to do it in the way that’s best for your students.
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Hi ,
I am surprised and blessed when I read this article.Thanks for dropping these kinds of articles really blessing to everyone specially to SS teachers.
I teach middle age children (younger than high school) in SS. I was very surprised when I took over the class that almost none of them knew to have prayer in class. I’ve taught SS for many years in different churches, and by this age, all of them knew there would be a prayer time. This has made it difficult to introduce them to our own prayer time. I really needed an idea and had nothing! Then I read this article and it all came together! Please join me in prayer that this method will work for my kids.
Thank you for the article. It was a blessing to me. I have been wondering how to accomplish this. I am going to make cards this week for my class. I pray that God will continue bless you and help you as you continue in the ministry he has given you.
Hi!
This is a really great article and one that I’m going to share with the other teachers in my department ?
Great idea! Thanks for sharing, I’ll try to share this with my lead teacher and see if we can use this in our class as well.
Thanks for this web site! I use it all the time for childrens church as well as Wed. evening church.
We were trying to teach the children on Sun. morning how to pray and encourage them to do so. It wasn’t working. I read the article about using index cards and told the teacher. We both wrote out different cards for them to read. And used it this pass Sunday. It worked, they all read their cards, several older children had 2 cards and the little kids we helped them read they repeated after us. But getting them use to praying and sharing and not worried about what the other person next to them. We all have to learn, I would listen to some of the older adults pray and started learning and feeling comfortable.
This is a great web site, keep up the good work..thank you so much Terrie
Thanks for these lessons as a person who is called for kids ministry I benefit a lot from them and I thank God for you for helping us be blessed
I WAS SOOOOOOOOO! TOUCH BY WHAT I JUST READ, I THINK IT IS JUST WONDERFUL! MUST USE THIS, KEEP DOING WHAT U R DOING MAY GOD BLESS U REAL GOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!
Hi, Love to hear about teaching children to pray. God laid this on my heart many years ago, and prayer is an integral part of all our children’s programmes, including a Friday night outreach programme for kids where we get up to 50 kids on any one night most of whom come from unchurched families. On the last Friday night of last term, they prayed in small groups for the Holy Spirit. Afterwards I asked the children if they had felt the Holy Spirit come to them. Kids told me they had tingly arms and hands, others felt a warmth go through them, several of the more challenging kids were shaking and unable to stop, one couldn’t unclench his hands and so on. It is wonderful to see these children experience the presence of the Holy Spirit and makes praying more real to them. I have also held over the last several years, 6 monthly prayer mornings for kids, where I have all sorts of prayer activities set up, and the children move around each prayer station, praying the prompted prayers. e.g. a large container of sand, child reads the poem footprints out loud, then puts their footprint in the sand and thanks God that He has promised to never leave or forsake them. Write your sin in chalk on a stone and put into a bucket of water (with a little janola added) – as your sin dissolves on the stone, ask God to forgive you and He will remember it no more. There are so many exciting things you can do these prayer stations. I also hold a two yearly full day (Saturday) prayer seminar for Kids for teaching them to pray. We have praise and worship, teaching and prayer activities/prayer stations for this too. This year we are teaching on praying through the ‘arts’. Each child will select a workshop to attend – dance, ribbon and flags, art, rap, singing, music etc (for the music they will have to manage a basic instrument) and will be taught how to pray using these mediums and learn a dance,song, etc over the day. At the end of the day we will have a praise and worship concert that the parents and church will be invited to and the children will present what they have learned. e.g. play a musical item, sing a song in two parts, dance, rap, say their poem, display their art etc. It is really great to get creative when teaching the children about prayer and encouraging them to pray in groups. We always have adult volunteers to take groups of children around the prayer stations and help them with praying. It is an awesome time to spend with the kids. Hope this is useful for you.
hi Otter am moved by your testimony too, I feel God wants me and my team to help the children in church and estate build a prayer life that will stand like a castle built on a rock not sand. Kindly send me info on prayer activities and how you do it, wow it will be great having a night vigil for them
Hi Otter, I too would love to hear more about your prayer stations and activities. I am taking over directing the children’s Sunday evening programs at our church. I notice that our kids don’t really know a lot about prayer & would like to spend some time focusing on that. Your ideas with the footprints and rocks are wonderful. Thanks, Evelyn
I really like your articles and they are really helping me in improving our church sunday shool.
I have taught our sunday school using your articles that you have been sending me and the children really like them and this has caused our sunday school class to increase in number and about 23 children have now come to know the Lord Jesus christ as their saviour.
Please keep it up and may God bless you.
Thanks, this is such great ideas. Im am so excited and eager to implement this teaching to our little ones at childrens church.
Thank you for sharing
This is a great idea! Thank you for sharing it with us. I was thinking on this topic just this Sunday with my own 3rd/4th grade class. I will talk to my co-teacher and implement this soon! Thank you for your generous service to Christ and his body.
This sounds like a great idea. We’ve been working on getting kids to pray in our midweek program (ages 4-10). A few are avid prayers and the rest tend to default to these kids when prayer time comes up. Last week, we all sat in a circle and prayed one by one. If you didn’t want to pray, you could tap the person next to you. The trouble was, once one kid tapped, the next 5 did the same! This might be a great solution for those kids who just don’t know how to pray or what to say. Maybe we’ll try it this week! Thanks.
I love your ideas for teaching children to pray!!!! What a great idea. I especially like that you have pre-made cards for them to read or that they can pray more personally if they would like. Thanks for sharing this great idea!
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