Explorers Club
Explorers is a jointly run afterschool club here at SUN school with friends from our Church, St Marys Sulhamstead and from school.
It was started about 25 years ago by a teacher at the school and a couple of parents from the church. The aim was to explore the Christian faith in a fun and exciting way and to foster links between the school and the church. And it is still running with those aims today. The club is open to all children from SUN school from Year 1 to Year 6. It has been encouraging to see many of our old pupils going along to the Christian Union at The Willink, our main feeder secondary school. Here the Christian faith is explored and discussed along side eating cake! All children from Explorers and the school along with their families are always very welcome at the services at St Marys. Explorers are invited to take part in special services from time to time at church.
A typical session starts with a drink and a snack and a chance to relax after a busy day at school. We then play some games outside with Hide and Seek being all the time favourite. We explore a story from the bible and there is usually a craft or activity linked to this. We end our time together with a short reflection that includes a song and a prayer.
In recent times we have made prayer boxes for each classes worship area. The boxes contain crosses, candles, and different coloured drapes to reflect the colours of the church year. As well we made scrap books of the bible stories that accompany the School Values. We appreciated the help with the coloured cloth from friends at the church.
We spent a year doing a Bible overview from cover to cover using The Block Buster Bible. This book takes a look behind the scenes of the bible and uses the theme of films. Each week the children acted out the story using the clapper board and shouting Lights, Camera Action! We were thrilled to have the author Andrew Pritchard come and talk to us!
This school year we are exploring the Christian values of the school. We have just finishing considering how to be thankful and have been out and about in the school grounds.
A big thank you to everyone at SUN School ,St Marys Church and the PCC who supported the Explorers Club in celebrating World Toilet Day by selling decorated toilet rolls. We have raised an amazing £240 which will enable us to sponsor 4 toilets with the toilet twinning charity.
The children selected the following countries to support South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Nepal. We will let you know once our certificates of twinning arrive.
Explorers ended the term by celebrating Christmas with a party. We had the most amazing pass the parcel created by Yvonne and enjoyed lots of food. Rachel led us in a reflection about the true meaning of Christmas from the Bible stories about the birth of Jesus.
There are several Christmas services at St Marys over the festive period to which everyone is very warmly invited.
The Carol Service is at 3.30 pm on Sunday 21 st December and the Christingle workshop is at 3.30 pm on Christmas Eve.
We do wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas and look forward to welcoming the children back to Explorers next term
Yvonne, Rachel and Mrs Webb.
Who we are...
Sian Webb
Yvonne Cook
Rachel Belshaw
