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.

Explorers

Light Party

We ended the term exploring the theme of 'Jesus Light of the World’ who shows us the way to God. The children decorated paper lanterns and had glow sticks. We had a go at apple bobbing and this was a great success! Some very imaginative techniques were used as well as some very wet heads!

Remembrance

This last week our theme was remembering. We started by playing Kims game helping us think about remembering.

Every year at our villageRemembrance Service at the Spire, Norman plays the Last Post on his trumpet. It was great to welcome him to Explorers to show us the trumpet and to explain why the Last Post is played at such events. The children were transfixed by listening to him play. We were very appreciative of him coming and playing for us.

We then linked the theme of remembering to the Last Supper Jesus had with his disciples, here he shared bread and wine as a symbol of his death and resurrection on the cross. This tradition has been a central part of Christian worship down through the centuries and it was helpfully explained by our newest team member Mrs Bailey.

The children painted pebbles of things they wanted to remember and once again we were impressed with their creativity.

Sian Webb

Rachel Belshaw

Diana Bagshaw

Beverley-Kim Bailey

https://www.sunchurch.co.uk/