Sensory Bible Stories

We’ve recently introduced a new resource to our Sunday morning sessions for children and young people with additional needs. I’d been contemplating how we could better incorporate prayer into our sessions and in particular how we could ensure that children and young people were active participants in times of prayer. I’d always included at the end of each sensory story a short prayer related to truths about God’s character and the gospel taken from that particular Bible story. I’ve talked here about how I’ve used these stories and prayers to pray for children and young people throughout the week. It felt important though to involve the children and young people more in prayer. I wanted them to be able to have some choice in what to pray for and to be able to explore and engage with items related to prayer. With this in mind I put together a shopping bag (which has now graduated to a shoebox!) of items which could be used by children, young people and helpers to pray during our sessi...

  Photo by Jonah Pettrich on Unsplash 'He tends his flock like a shepherd: 'He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young' Isaiah 40:11  This verse struck me a few weeks ago as I prepared to meet and share the gospel with children and young people with additional needs on the coming Sunday morning.  The last phrase, in particular, stuck out 'He gently leads those that have young'. I find this promise really reassuring. While the children and young people we support may not be the youngest members of our church family, they may be some of our most vulnerable. I've been using this verse to pray for myself and for those I serve alongside caring for and teaching these most precious members of our flock. Isaiah 40 is essentially a promise from God to rescue His people. Ultimately it points to our rescue by Jesus, the Good Shepherd. It's comforting that in the middle of this big promise God remembers t...

  Photo by Kit Suman on Unsplash A couple of weeks ago I wrote a sensory story about Moses, in a couple of weeks ago I was also self-isolating. After over two years of avoiding the inevitable, my positive lateral flow test finally arrived. Thankfully it came with fairly mild symptoms and also with a sense of gratitude for God’s provision. I was thankful that it arrived at a time where I didn’t need to cancel or rearrange anything particularly urgent. I was thankful that it arrived at a time where my body was already healthy and reasonably energized, able to recover easily. I was thankful for practical provisions, a safe comfortable home in which to recover, food deliveries already in place and offers of practical help. As I read the Bible’s account of Moses’ earliest days ( Exodus 2 ) one of the themes which struck me was that of provision. God provides Moses with safety while he floats down the Nile in a basket. He provides Moses with a new family and home with Pharoah’s daught...

 The afternoon that I went to get my second Astra-Zeneca dose I had time to kill on a high street for the first time in a long while. I ate a waffle, I bought some running socks from Marks & Spencer's and I wandered around a couple of charity shops. It all felt quite novel but for a long time I've found charity shops novel and interesting. A few weeks later I went charity-shop-shopping again with a purpose in mind to find some puzzles which the children at Church could enjoy during free-play. I found exactly what I was looking for, two beautifully illustrated animal-themed puzzles in perfect condition. A couple of years ago when I'd just begun to share Bible stories with our little band of pioneers I went to the charity shops armed with a list of resources which I thought would be useful for the task ahead. I found a toy sheep for the many sheep-related Bible stories, a boat for all the adventures on the water, and a baby doll. I even found a beautiful board book of Bib...

 I used to know all the words to 'The Bare Necessities' because I sang it over and over everyday to a boy that I taught. I don't have an amazing singing voice but you wouldn't know that from his reaction. His delight in my efforts motivated me to sing the song again and again and imprinted the lyrics on my mind. There's an idea out there that children and young people with additional needs need very specific, specialized and often expensive resources to be able to access anything including church. Generally, I think that this idea is well-intentioned and comes from a place of wanting to serve these children and young people in the best way possible. Unfortunately though I think that it can be easy for companies to take advantage of those supporting individuals with additional needs by marketing resources as specialized or essential when these may not be the case. While there may be times when children and young people do need specific resources to access church I be...

       Setting up! I wanted to share some resources that we’ve used at Church in the run up to Easter. We were able to run our ministry for children and young people with additional needs under covid-19 restrictions as a support group. It was joyous. For three weeks we played and listened to truths about Jesus coming on a donkey as our King and rescuer. We celebrated like the people on Palm Sunday with balloons and bubbles and a sound button which said ‘Hosanna’. We played with dusty flour and soap and water and some of us even washed our feet as we talked about Jesus washing His friends’ feet. Because He loved them and He loves us. We admired an Easter garden and heard about Mary’s joy at meeting her resurrected friend Jesus in the garden. It had been a long time since we had met together so although I’ve included plans for sensory stories in the resources below our sessions had more of a free-play feel and we didn’t include a structured story time each week. We s...

  The first disclaimer about this story is that I’ve never actually run it. At least I’ve not run it with any children and young people with additional needs. I ran it by myself during the Summer of 2020 when we were still doing church from home. I filmed it and made a video where I talked parents through how they could run it with their children. You can see it here if you’re interested. In 2020 when sending resources to families (sensory story templates, videos, practical prayer ideas, etc) I gave the disclaimer that if they try running this in their living room at home, it won’t look like it does in my living room. With children and young people with additional needs around the script doesn’t often always get followed. At home there’ll be unlimited distractions from toys to technology, siblings to pets, the smell of food from the kitchen or the sound of a lawn mower outside. It can be discouraging when sharing the gospel with children or young people with additional needs do...

  We talked in this story about our favourite foods, homemade pizza might be mine! I often feel a burden to pray for the children around me. I think all of us who spend time alongside children and young people in schools, churches, and out in the community experience this. For children with additional needs especially there seems to be an endless supply of issues to worry about on their behalf, their development, their health, their family, their happiness, their access to education indeed their access to anywhere. I’ve often felt an overwhelming sense of concern for the families and children whom I encounter. Occasionally it has presented itself as a sense of real despair or fear. When I remember these words from Philippians I know I can and I should bring all these worries to God, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard ...

There are so many occasions where the sensory story we’ve run on a particular week feels coincidently relevant to my life or to something happening in the wider world. The story of John the Baptist might be my favourite example of this. We ran this story in September 2020 on the first week which we were able to meet after over six months of churches been closed due to covid-19 restrictions. Our mainstream children’s and youth ministries were both studying Mark that term so I searched that gospel for something which might lend itself to being turned into a sensory story. John the Baptist with his honey and locust-based snacks, his itchy clothes and straggly hair and his connection to water seemed to fit the bill. I was so excited to be able to come back to church in person and to be able to share Bible stories with the children and young people in our group once again. We were aware of how difficult the preceding months had been for those with additional needs and their families and i...

This wasn't a Christmas story but it did feature some gift-wrapped goodies! Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories. My name is Helen, I live in North London where I lead a small group at my church ( St James Muswell Hill ) which supports children and young people with additional needs to access Bible teaching. When I first started leading this group in 2018 I found it very difficult to source teaching materials for the children who were coming along each week. Children with very limited expressive and receptive language who were unable to access academic activities or engage in more abstract thinking. We enjoyed their company and they seemed to enjoy ours but we wanted to offer something more, an experience of the gospel which was accessible to them. Although I found lots of practical advice and encouragement from various organisations (see ‘useful links’ list), my many hours of googling ‘sensory bible stories’ and similar terms produced little fruit. Lots of otherwise great resources ...