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Prayer Stations
Have you seen the cool new thing to teach prayer to Sunday School classes? Prayer stations are all the rage, or at least they are on my Pinterest feed, and I have to admit I rather like adding a tangible element to prayer to help kids focus.
My one problem with most prayer station ideas?
Most prayer stations focused on you and your feelings, instead of on the person you’re supposed to be talking to. Now, my Sunday School class is part of the way through a unit on Moses, and all throughout we see Moses talking to God.
I mean, you can’t go 5 verses without reading “and Moses went to talk with God,” or some variation on that. So, we’ve been talking a lot about prayer. A LOT.
And to sum it up I wanted them to pray for things that are important to God. But, if I have a hard time focusing and I’m in my 30s, 8-10 year olds are certainly not going to focus better than me (Actually, some probably can, I have the attention and focus of a squirrel).
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Prayer Station supplies
prayer stations printable (over on the subscriber page, come join the fun and get access to dozens upon dozens more), heart gems*, 
Our prayer stations
I tried to get pictures of each station, but the kids came in and had it before I got them all, so some of these pictures are of the station in action, and the forgiveness station it didn’t feel right to get a picture of the kids there.
I’m adding in some Bible lessons that you might tie each prayer station to as I think of lessons to tie the particular station to.
Families- pray for your family and for other families. I had a small plastic heart for them to take home to remind them to pray for their families.
Applicable Bible lessons:
Forgiveness- God has called us to forgive those who hurt us. So, they were to write down the name of someone they needed to forgive and pray for that person. When they were done praying, they erased that person’s name, just like God has erased all of their sins.
Applicable Bible lessons:
- Joseph forgives his brothers
- it’s a stretch, but David and King Saul
Government- This was the most boring station because I had nothing for them to do or take. They prayed for the different levels of the government.
I have the best readers and here are some of your great suggestions:
- Pictures of the different government leaders for them to take home and pray for
- LEGO bricks to build into a wall, much like Nehemiah did
Some Bible stories that tie in:
Missions- I asked a missionary we support for pictures of people they’ve met with specific prayer requests. Each kid took one of the pictures and prayed for that request, and took the picture home to keep praying. For safety reasons, I’ve covered and pixelated the pictures the missionaries shared.
Bible stories that tie in:
Names of Jesus- Take one of the slips of paper with a name of Jesus (we just googled and printed some out), and trace the name of Jesus in the salt as you praise God.
Bible stories that tie-in:
- Isaiah
- Revelation
- I’ll have to think for some other good ones, most that I was thinking of are for the names of God
Pray for our church- I found a small puzzle from Hobby Lobby that they could color as they prayed for our pastors, the elder board, for the Sunday School teachers.
Bible stories that tie-in:
Persecuted Church- There are many countries it is illegal to be a Christian or to be a missionary (including the one where my friends are), I printed off a list from Open Doors of the 50 most dangerous countries, and as they prayed for the country they covered that country with play dough on a map. If I’d had enough play dough I would have asked them to leave the play dough for each country, but we did not, sadness.
Bible stories that tie-in:
Praise God- This was just a giant roll of butcher paper with lots of markers, and they got to write what they were thankful for, or what they wanted to praise God for. I told them to be as artistic or as plain as they wanted to be, and their personalities really shone through.
Bible stories that tie-in:
Prayer Rock- Well, it was supposed to be rocks, but I couldn’t find my stash of rocks, so it became popsicle sticks. We came up with a list of attributes of God, and each kid would choose one of those attributes and praise God for that attribute as they wrote it on their stick.
Bible stories that tie-in:
- Isaiah
- Psalms 23
- Job, where God displays HIS glory (yes, these were all linked to earlier)
Looking for more prayer ideas that can turn into prayer stations?
Comments
38 responses to “Prayer Stations”
This is lovely. Perhaps a card or bookmark with a picture of the various people who hold the positions you mentioned for the Government ststion?
Good idea!
Love the ideal I THINK I will do this with my children’s church
I hope it is effective for your children’s church.
I LOVE THIS! I’m 100% in agreement, that when Sunday school is taught, too much focus is on personal feeling and not on the commitment, and the selflessness that we are asking our children to be part of. THIS IS BRILLIANT!
I loved your prayer stations. Perhaps you can use small American Flags for the Government Prayer Station. and tie a note with the names of government people or agencies. Thank you for sharing… Have a”Jesus” filled day
That’s a good idea!
I can definitely see this helping kids to develop more thoughtful prayers.
It certainly did with my class.
We should certainly all be praying for Congress 😀 I’ve never heard of prayer stations before, but they do make sense!
I have a feeling we follow some slightly different boards at times. 😀
I kind of feel the same as you about gimmicky prayer stations. These sound great though, and I especially like the hearts to take home to remind the children to pray about loved ones.
We run a teen youth group and happened upon the most wonderful prayer tools during one of our prayer nights for T’s birthday. We use a white chalk pen on the mirror writing everyone’s requests and a candle which we pass around. The person who is holding the candle prays either inside or out loud. When they have finished they pass the candle to the next person. Everyone then has a turn to pray and no one forgets what to pray for because it is all written on the mirror. It has revolutionised our prayer times!
That does sound like a great idea! I may steal that sometime.
I love this idea of prayer stations for kids. What a great way to get kids to learn about prayer!
I teach kindergarten through 3rd grade Sunday school. I really want to find a way to implement this on their level! Reading through the reply there are some really great ideas! Thank you all for sharing!
I wonder if pairing older and younger kids would work. That way the older kids can show leadership skills and help the younger kids with reading. It also gives them a person to pray with, which could help their focus.
For the Government, you can have little American flags, the cupcake decoration kind, which they can take and stick into a pin coushion. or you can print some stickers that say I prayed for my government with an American flag on it.
That’s a great idea! I’ll do that next time.
I am putting together prayer station ideas for a group of church educators this fall. Can I include yours? I will be happy to send you the complete idea list when it is done.
Yes, please give me credit in the list, but I’d love to see your complete list when you have it done (I’m always looking for new ideas).
Thank you very much for the Prayer station for kids idea, this will really help me with my planning for next year.
I deal will fifty four kids aged between six and fourteen in my Congregation.
This is very helpfull.
All the best in what you doing.
In governement slot your coud use lego bricks. With each prayer for Preseident/Governor/ Senate? Local city council take a brick and join it to another…. symbolising our prayers building a city/nation just as Nehemiah helped rebuild the city.
That’s a good idea!
For the government I was thinking Lego, duplo, or building blocks as well – maybe the larger versions – especially for the building idea because you could stack them to create various levels of blocks as there are various levels of governmen.
You’re right that is a really good idea, and I need to edit the post with that idea included.
What about having the children write a postcard to mail to the government officials.
That’s a good suggestion!
This a awesome way to teach what is and how to teach them how to pray!!!We need something like this our youth and adults too!!!
It is one of my favorite lessons we did.
Thanks for sharing this program about the prayer stations for it will help to teach children about prayer and how to pray!!!
YAY! I’m glad it’s helpful.
Hi I just read your post and love this idea. A couple questions. Do you teach one prayer station at a time? Are they all set up at the same time? And how long is one lesson? Thank you so much.
It’s really going to depend on your kids. Since I did this with kids who were somewhat familiar with some of the concepts, I’ve done it with all of the stations at the same time, or sometimes with a smaller subset of the stations.
This was also the only big activity, so they had time to move between the different stations for about 20-30 minutes.
Our entire Sunday School class is about 1.5 hours, from 9:00-10:30.Does that help?
Where is the printable?
It is in the subscriber library you get access to when you sign up for my newsletter. The sign up is in the side bar.
For the government a collage would work. Al the different parts of government; presidents,governors, senators & House of Representatives for your state, and state house and senators. All glued on one card stock.
That’s a good idea!
Love theses ideas! Cant wait to try these stations!
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