Our Liturgical Calendar

Our Children's Worship program follows a liturgical calendar that marks key events and seasons in the Christian Church's year. The focus of the calendar is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as, the teachings of the Bible.

In Children's Worship, we have a large felt wall hanging with a big circle on it. The circle is made of 52 rectangles. The rectangles are the colors of the paraments on the communion table and the pulpit. Everyone, including me, was surprised when we figured this out. The next thing we learned was that each section of colors represented a "season" in church. We have sections of purple for Advent and Lent, white for Easter, and green for Ordinary Time. Each Sunday we would move a short, felt pointing arrow that, for us, was difficult to tell what rectangle it was pointing at. I came up with the idea with using a small paper lamb to place on the rectangle to keep our place on the circle. What fun it is to get to be the one who moves the lamb to the next rectangle. The kiddos would get very excited to be able to see how many more "moves" it was until Christmas or Easter.

The days for Christmas and Easter are marked with a small wooden star and a small wooden cross. This was very easy for the kids to understand the meaning but there was one rectangle that puzzled everyone. There is one red rectangle at the bottom of the circle with nothing marking it to be special other than it is the only red rectangle on the circle. Another thing we noticed was that we were never in our classroom when it was time for the red rectangle. What does the red rectangle mean; why is there a red rectangle; how come there is only one?

This year we are going to have class so we can move our little sheep to the red rectangle, learn about Pentecost and have a birthday party for the church. This will be a very exciting class time for the kids (there's nothing more exciting than a birthday party!) and I will have to be "on my toes" to help them understand the meaning of the lesson. But for me, as with all our lessons in Children's Worship, I hope it helps them to understand "the what, the why, and the how come" of coming to church and helps them to understand and grow their faith in Jesus.

--Tina