St Mark’s Sunday School
Fifty-five children are on roll at Sunday School – from “babes in arms” to a Confirmation class, aged 13. We have a group of eight Sunday School Teachers. The crèche and junior Sunday School teachers are assisted by a dedicated group of young helpers from the Youth Fellowship. Cutting out, colouring in or making things can be difficult when you are very young and extra pairs of more dexterous hands are always very useful.
We follow a Bible Study based curriculum, published by the Scripture Union with the general title “Light”. The series has Leader’s Guides and Children’s Booklets for four age bands, ranging from “Bubbles” for the crèche, “Splash”, X-Stream” to “Grid” for the 11-14 age range.
Sunday School starts in September with a party to welcome everyone back plus fun and games or an art competition – unsuspecting parents may be press-ganged into acting as judges. The children’s Harvest Festival is one of the highlights of the year. Karen Doyle prepares and assembles the most exquisite fresh fruit salad in front of the children. It is a mouth watering affair – and at the end, we all get a very generous helping. Another big highlight is the Nativity Play. The children start talking about this from early November. Competition for parts is keen. Mary McDowell always presents an excellent performance on Christmas morning.
Confirmation classes, taken by the Rector, begin at the end of January and continue until Confirmation in May. During Lent we follow the C.M.S. Lenten Project and after Easter we usually try out one of the suggested recipes, bake our small cakes and sell them. The money raised, helps to boost funds for the C.M.S. project.
Easter Monday is a family fun day when we hunt for buried eggs, (small chocolate ones) have egg throwing competitions, (real ones) and egg and spoon races (wooden eggs, plastic spoons). Of course the worthy winners of these events receive marvelous prizes – “Chocolate Eggs”!
Sunday School ends after the Children’s Prize Day in early June. After a well deserved rest we start preparations of the following September.
