I have a number of Beavers who will, when discussing prayers and religion, happily say “There IS no God, you know!” and then not join in with whatever faith based activity we have planned for the evening. This leads to them also arguing with others in the colony about God’s existance, and while some would argue that this debate is healthy, it is often out of the scope of our capabilities as leaders (as is the existance of the Easter bunny and Santa Claus - we generally discourage this debate as it will upset some children and their parents)

So I came up with a new way to do prayer writing as part of the Promise Challenge that steers clear of the question of God’s existance altogether, so that we can go back to religion another time and present it in terms of what some people believe and what others believe. This is a pretty good activity to do at the start of the new year, it gets the Beavers thinking about the future and what they can do to improve themselves and their enviornment.

New Year Wish Tree

Running time: 20 minutes
Location: indoors

Resources: Large sheet of paper, green paper and felt pens

Instructions

1. Draw an outline of a tree trunk on the large sheet (roughly A2 size)
2. Beavers draw round their hands on the green paper
3. They then write a wish on each hand: one wish for other people, and one wish about improving themselves
4. Stick all the hands to the large sheet to make a ‘wish tree’
5. Show the Beavers that these wishes can be looked upon as very simple prayers (so long as they aren’t wishing for a new Playstation!)