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/ 20 November 2015

The power of repetition

Paper chain figures

Bible storytelling in a toddler group is a challenge. It’s easier if a few three-year-olds are actively engaged at the front. They inspire younger ones to join in.

(Recently Tessa Rust, the Diocesan Early Years Mission Adviser, came up with the brilliant suggestion that each child sits on a small cushion or carpet tile, which ‘fixes’ them in one place during the story. It works. We now use pillows and three of those old bolster pew cushions, the only downside being that it’s more difficult to ‘sleep’ in ‘Sleeping bunnies’ if it means a child falls off a cushion!)

A few weeks ago, I told the story of ten men covered with spots (Luke 17:11–17). They came as a gang to ask Jesus to heal them. He sent them off to show themselves to the priest and by the time they got there, the spots had gone. Only one bothered to return to thank Jesus.

I told this story using a line of ten concertina figures and a song to the tune of ‘Ten green bottles’ counting down from ten (adapted from Scripture Union’s Tiddlywinks series):

Ten spotty men come to ask Jesus to heal,
Ten spotty men come to ask Jesus to heal,
And if one spotty man gets better, he runs away to hide,
There’ll be nine spotty men come to ask Jesus to heal.

One spotty man comes to ask Jesus to heal,
One spotty man comes to ask Jesus to heal,
And if one spotty man gets better, he returns to thank the Lord,
There’ll be no spotty men come to ask Jesus to heal!

By the time I got as far as ‘Six spotty men’, I was bored. But once you begin a song like that, you’re committed to soldiering on to the end. To be fair, a few actively engaged children plus parents were still singing enthusiastically. Eventually the supply of spotty men ran out. I gave out the Tiddlywinks handout (a colouring and counting picture of nine men hiding with one man kneeling before Jesus) and determined never to tell the story like that again. End of story?

Well, not quite. Next week, a childminder enthusiastically told me about Callum, the two-year-old she’d brought to Toddlers last week. As she prepared his lunch that day, she gave him the ten spotty men take-home leaflet. He proceeded to sing her the story, mixing up the numbers!

‘I’d no idea he was listening. He wasn’t sitting with the children at the front,’ she said. ‘I was amazed at what he’d taken in.’

I shared her amazement. Never underestimate the power of repetition, a song and a story about Jesus, nor a child’s ability to understand and remember – even if they are looking in the opposite direction!

Ro Willoughby is Children’s and Families’ Community Worker at St Paul’s Finchley.


About Ro Willoughby

Ro Willoughby works with children, families and people of all ages at St Michael’s Highgate.

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