Back to School prayer cootie catcher

One thing I do in my welcome email to new subscribers is to ask what they’d love to see. Monday I got a response saying Back to School prayer stations, and I thought, “Yes! That’s genius, and I was playing with some ideas,” and got started on it, but I very quickly figured out that I wasn’t going to get it done in time to be useful for Back to School, and I was looking through my Sunday School files and found a Back to School prayer cootie catcher I made a few years ago and never shared with y’all. So, there you go, my Back to School prayer cootie catcher.

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What you need for the Back to School Prayer Cootie Catcher

the printable (over in the subscriber section, go join my newsletter), scissors

It’s nice and simple, print, cut out, fold!

Let’s put together that Back to School prayer cootie catcher

I’m guessing at some point in your childhood you put together a cootie catcher, or maybe you called it a fortune teller.

But, it’s fairly straightforward, Cut out the square on the lines. Then fold it corner to corner into triangles, and switch to do it the other way.

Then fold the four corners into the middle, flip it over, and do the same thing again.

Then squash it into a nice little square. Yes, squash is an official word.

When you print out the printable, there is a line drawing explaining how to do this. Or, I’m betting if you ask a seven-year-old girl, she probably will put it together in less time than it took me to type out the instructions.

Seriously, I made so many of these as a kid.

Also, I just realized I put the middle two pictures in the wrong order. So instead of left to right, I guess you follow in a circle instead of the normal left to right…

I’ll have to fix that later.

Using your Back to School Prayers

I’ve found everyone has a different way they use cootie catchers. I always learned it as pick the outside color, and spell it. Then pick an inside item and spell that out. Now you are ready to pick which one you are going to pray for.

Then I saw someone just pick the outside color and spell it, and that was it, then you picked your item to pray for. It confused me.

Either way, you go about it, once you get to the inside there are eight different people associated with school to pray for: teachers, principals, specials teachers (do other states call art/P.E./music specials?), custodians, other students…

When you flip it up there is something to pray for. For the most part, it is geared as if the person is in authority over the child. Let’s face it, almost everyone they interact with at school has authority, and they have to learn how to respect that person, and how to disagree and still obey what they’ve been told to do.

Getting pictures with older kids can be quite funny to try. Sometimes they cooperate and you get amazing pictures.

Sometimes you get pictures like this. But, if I’m honest I love this picture right here. It’s got so much personality, and it shows who my kids are.

More Back to School Ideas

• Have a Not Back to School day
• Preparing for a new school year
• Books of the Bible cup game
• Time for a Sword Drill (great way to start your Sunday School day)

But Ticia, the kids in my Sunday School class are homeschooled (fill in the blank special category)

I get it. My kids are homeschooled, and as they goofed off with it and looked through the different people to pray for in their back to school prayers I got, “Secretary?” with accompanying looks of confusing.

Or custodian.

They really looked confused at that one.

So you have to challenge their thoughts, get them to think smaller.

Who cleans up their house? That’s the custodian. Often that is going to be their Mom, yet again, but as a homeschool Mom, I can tell you I don’t want to clean, and there are times the kids and I but heads arguing over how and when to clean.

So, yes every role in that back-to-school prayers cootie catcher happens in my homeschool. You just have to be creative with how you look at it.

Why have Back to School Prayers?

I’ve taught Sunday School for 10 years. Now I’m in the youth group, and in every single classroom, and every single year there are kids who are worried.

What should you do with worries?

Take them to God. God can handle it all.

Our church this year has a theme of prayer, so as we work through prayers at church, I’m sure that will be popping up more here.

More Prayer Ideas

I’ve got hundreds of ideas over on my Prayer board you should go check out. But, here on the site, here are 5 prayer ideas to try in you Sunday school.

• 10 Commandments Prayer Station
• Praying for those affected by natural disasters
• Lord’s Prayer Craft
• Interactive Prayer Stations
• Teaach kids how to pray

More prayer or back to school ideas from my friends

I asked my children’s ministry friends to share with me their ideas, and here’s what I got:

• Blessings of the Backpack– super love this idea building off the fruit of the spirit
• Back to School Prayer Bash– This looks so fun!
• Prayer Parables– I love how interactive Susan makes these prayers, also her sense of humor
• How to use prayer stations– Anne Marie has lots of great ideas