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.
It was good to welcome new children to Explorers as well as familiar faces this last week.
For the first session of term we ‘explored the Bible’.
The children enjoyed a treasure hunt looking for the names of the books of the New Testament hidden in the court yard. We then put them in order and learnt a song to help us learn them.
It’s great to see the enthusiasm the children have for helping so we now have a sign up sheet for jobs!
Next week we are Exploring Harvest and then in coming weeks we will look at different meals Jesus shared with people. There are lots of crafts, games and activities planned for the coming weeks.
We are grateful for the help we have from two D of E students from The Willink who are with us for the next few weeks.
Do look out for dates of family services, Sunday School and Harvest at St Mary’s church. Everyone is always very welcome.
Sian Webb
Rachel Belshaw
Diana Bagshaw
