I love mazes, whether they are the giant mazes at the Renaissance Festival or a maze on the back of a cereal box. They’re fun to complete and sometimes when designed right, can help you learn, aside from the mental acuity you gain from trying the maze. As I was brainstorming a new back-to-school prayer idea, I thought of a maze, and I pulled out my sketchbook and started planning out a great activity for your Bible lesson.
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The Back to School Prayer Maze printable
The printable is on my subscriber page that you get access to when you subscribe to my newsletter. There are currently about half a dozen more prayer activities on there to use. Including the wildly popular Skittles prayers.
I made two versions of the back-to-school prayer maze, and both are in the printable, with a boy and a girl. I also deliberately chose to make this in black and white so kids can easily color all the people however they want. I will admit, I did make the teacher a woman with glasses, mainly because I wear glasses, and thanks to years of watching kids cartoons somehow in my mind teachers wear glasses.
How I would use the Back to School prayer maze
I would start by talking through all of the different pictures in the maze. I tried to keep it somewhat generic and easy to apply to many situations.
Then I would talk through with them of different things you might pray for each of the different people on there.
But wait Ticia, you’re saying, it’s 2020 and school is different.
Don’t worry, I’m going to talk about that in a minute.
What could they pray for themselves at school? Maybe they need help focusing or they find the classroom overwhelming.
How about the people in their class? Maybe there’s someone in their class they don’t get along with, or maybe they really want to pray their best friend is in their class and not a different class.
Now let’s talk about the teacher, a teacher can make or break a school year for a kid. I certainly learned to love math in 6th grade because I had an amazing math teacher. Maybe you could pray for an encouraging and kind teacher or a teacher that will challenge you and is passionate about the classes they teach.
Technology is going to be a big change for prayer in 2020, keep reading
I’m sure some of you are saying, “Ticia this is clearly for elementary kids, how much technology could they have?” Now it’s been over a decade since I was in a public school classroom and even then my first graders were writing “papers” on a laptop.
As a joking answer, maybe pray the technology gremlins don’t break the computers.
That’s just me?
Seriously, how about we pray for teachers to clearly explain how to use the computers and iPads, or computers that work well.
Pray for librarians as they teach kids how to use the library and for all of the many books they’ll get this year will be returned in good condition (as a young child I may have once bought a book that was accidentally left on a burner and therefore got an interesting burn pattern on it).
Pray for specials (art, music, and PE in Texas). Pray for the teachers as they prepare lessons, pray for art supplies.
Pray for the lunch ladies, they spend a long time on their feet and don’t get a lot of thanks. Pray for the people who can’t buy their own lunch and have to rely on lunches as their main meal.
Pray for the custodians who clean the schools. Pray for their work, and that it isn’t too hard. Thank God for the work they do keeping the schools clean.
The lab, I know not all schools have this, but the schools I taught at did, and so pray for science lessons to go well, and for students to use the materials correctly.
Final thought on how I’d use it in my Sunday School
You’ll notice in my sample picture I’ve got circles drawn around each picture. For me, the act of drawing the lines and several circles around each picture helped me focus during prayer. I’m very easily distracted and having that picture to focus on and circle with my hands helped me focus.
I’d encourage kids to circle each picture as they pray for the person (or class).
Let’s talk back to school prayers during COVID
Obviously many kids aren’t going back to school, and so what might some of these prayers look like now?
How about ability to focus during Zoom lessons or for their classmates who might not have a safe situation to learn in at home?
Technology is HUGELY important right now, and for parents to quickly learn all of the different ways classwork has to be turned in, or how to sign into different electronic lessons.
While you may not have a lunch lady and a custodian anymore because you’re at home, there is still someone cooking all of those meals and cleaning your house. Pray for whoever is doing that. Thank God for all that hard work they’re doing.
Specials, I guarantee you all of those specials teachers miss their kids right now. They teach the same kids for six years in elementary school, pray for them to learn how to challenge students in these super weird times.
We live in unusual times, times I never would have expected to happen, but here we are.
There are A LOT of prayers needed to survive this back-to-school. I am hoping everyone will stay both safe and sane during these challenging times. Sane seems to be more difficult as time drags on 🙁