hey guys! Shawn here from shawnmhowell.com with summer camp devotional ideas. if
your church is involved in summer camp... putting on a camp this summer and you
are looking for some kind of morning devotion to add into that summer camp
then I have tested some great ideas from the book Faithful Families: Creating
Sacred Moments at Home by Tracy Smith. so keep watching if you're interested. so
recently my church did a summer fine arts camp and I was asked to do the
devotions each morning. talking anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes for about
21 children in grades fourth through seventh grade. and so I got to test out
some of the prayer ideas that Tracy Smith talks about in her book Faithful
Families. and so I wanted to share this with you because you might be looking
for summer camp ideas or just back to school prayer ideas or to add anything
new to your family or to your church ministry. so I thought I would share with you how
each of those went. so we tested it out not tested I just did these with the kids.
and then whatever really well I did the candle prayer and the finger labyrinth
prayer. we did fruits of the spirit prayer. I think those were the main... yep
those were the main ones that we focused on for the week. it was five days and
like I said I had anywhere from five to ten minutes. the candle prayer is on
page 155 in Tracy Smith's book and basically the supplies you need is just
a paper plate for every child and a votive candle. I just used the ones
that weren't in a container. they were about this tall. I
should've brought one to show you. they were about this high. they weren't the
tiny short ones because those might burn their hands but they were just a little
bit taller. and then one candle lighter. and I had the kids sit in a circle. I will try to
find a picture and will insert that. I had the kids at the circle and gave them each a
paper plate and gave them specific instructions of once the
flame is lit our mouths are quiet so that we can focus on our prayer
to God. so I gave the kids instructions not to touch the flame while it was lit
and also when they blow out the flame to then not touch the candle afterwards so
that they don't get hot wax on themselves. for the majority they did
really well. at first some of them had difficulty with that because I found out
that a lot of them had never lit a candle before. by the end of the week
they were expert candle lighters and will make excellent acolytes in the
future. so we also showed them how to hold if one of them had the flame in
their hand and then we were all lighting around in a circle then the one that is
unlit is the one who tilts toward the flame rather than the opposite so that
the wax doesn't drip. they learned a lot and I took prayer requests
from them. a lot of them had unspoken prayers they didn't want to share with
the group because there were 21 of them. and then we prayed and we watched the
candle flicker. I will put my entire
devotional plan that I used on my website which the link will be down in
the description box below. on the second day of summer camp I had a little bit
more time so I added in Tracy Smith's... let me get the chapter correct... morning
prepare for the day to come on pages 21 through 23. and we looked at the
scripture verse in Galatians about the fruits of the spirit. I made them
these cute little index cards that have each one of the fruits of the spirit on
them with just a little binder clip that they could take them home. I asked
them to... we went through and we talked... I briefly defined each one of the
fruits of the spirit and then I asked them to pick one to kind of focus on for
their day. so then that's what they also prayed about and thought about as
they were doing their candle prayer for that day. they really enjoy these and
took these home. on the third and fourth days of summer camp since we still had
some extra time I decided to add in a labyrinth finger prayer. let me get
this directly from... its the practice the labyrinth from Tracy Smith's book and
she has a template in her book .and so I just traced
the template onto a small paper plate with pencil. so I did 22 of these and then
the kids came in that morning and I explained what the difference
between a labyrinth and a maze was because they tended to blur the lines between
those two. I gave them tons of colors of pink puff puffy paint.
and then they just outlined their template with puff paint of a color of
their choice. then it took most of the day to dry. then on day four when
they all came in their labyrinths were dry and then we actually practiced the
labyrinth prayer. I was very surprised. I thought for sure that they
would not be able to follow the labyrinth with their fingers super slow
like they would just race through it. and we did have about three that raced
through it but everybody else really just took it seriously and followed slowly.
thought about either God or their fruit of the Spirit or something that they
wanted to pray about and really took their time and I actually felt like I
needed to speed them up because they were being too slow. but I let them take
their time and then of course we ended with our candle prayer. so that each day
of the fine arts camp devotions we ended with our candle prayer. but these were a
big hit and I didn't expect them to be. so I highly recommend the finger
labyrinth. the last day of the summer camp we only had time to do our candle
prayer and throughout the week the kids would keep asking when we were going to do the
candle prayer. tomorrow? we're gonna do the candle prayer? and so they were
really excited to continue that and start their morning off with that ritual
of prayer and meditation. they really loved it. a fifth-grade boy
actually told me that that was his favorite part of his day and he wished
that the devotional time with me was longer like the other stuff that they
did during the camp. hearing that really itreally touched my heart
and made my week. I got a lot out of praying with those kids and just getting
to know them for the week. so if you don't have a summer camp devotion or
you're looking to add different types of prayer into your
church ministry or even your family home prayer time, I highly recommend
checking out the Faithful Families; Creating Sacred Moments at Home BY Tracy
Smith. I'm still going through this book I'm still using and exploring some other
stuff in here because It has a lot of really good things .thanks so much
for watching my video on summer camp devotions. I'm not sure what I'm going to title this.
I'm going to title it something... some kind of devotionals back to school or summer
camp devotion ideas. thanks so much for watching this if you enjoyed this
video please give me a big thumbs up, share it with your friends, and don't
forget to subscribe. I will see you in my next video. thanks for watching. bye!
well if my energy seems really low in my video I just filmed it and looking back
on the footage I'm really puffy in my face. this pregnancy I have about a month
left to go and woke up this morning. so I'm waking up tired or not sleeping
well so my energy is low. and then this morning I feel like my face is puffy.
I'm not sure what's going on there but I'm really enjoying doing these videos. I'm
trying to get in as many as I possibly can before baby girl is born. I really
appreciate you guys support through all this. thank you!
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