Sensory Visiting Bag, Sensory & Memory Book

This is part of my visiting bag section - dare I call it a series of posts?

I feel a person doing pastoral visiting to children should definitely have something like a visiting bag, it doesn't have to be a big bag and it doesn't have to contain lots of random things. But if a visitor can have something to take with them to encourage conversation, discovery and ideas then the challenge that comes with working with children is being embraced.

To add to the sensory aspect of my bag I decided to again search the internet. From this I found a sensory book. The website I found things on is called KIDS Direct Short Breaks.

http://www.directshortbreaks.org.uk/page.asp?section=1513&sectionTitle=About+the+Service


Sensory play is something used by those who work with young children, children with special needs and I think it is a must with all children as a way to open up their thoughts, memories and just share in a fun way. There is talk about recognising the different social, physical, emotional, intellectual ways of learning and developing and I think sensory work can help them. The sensory book is a cheaper way of doing this.

This is something a person can make by themselves, using what they have to inspire them.

What you start with is a scrap book that can be made bulky. Then you include different materials, craft items, general bits and pieces that have a variety of textures, colours, shapes and can stretch the imagination. The items can then be stuck into the book with double sided sticky tape or glue.

The things I have put in my book include buttons, different types of string, felt, fur material, lentils, bubble wrap, wool, ribbon, a shell, lentils, pipe cleaners (furry, stripey and foil), tissue paper, crepe paper, foil, cotton wool, fake flower petal and mini sunflower, bit of net.

It really is random collection of items but that is the idea.

The items are about three or four on a page, therefore not overcrowding the senses with the different items and letting the child investigate each one.

The aim of the sensory book is to let the child I visit look through, guess what some of the items are, feel the items, chat about them and maybe take it further than that. There are items that might remind them of the things we have done at church, for example things we have used in particular crafts, or the small fake sunflower might remind them that we planted sunflowers at one of the children's groups and then the children had to take them home and grow them.

There are items that might remind them of things from their lives.

But more than that, the items can be used to tell a story. The child might be inspired by the different things in the sensory book and use it to tell a story about a whole different world. They can embrace their imagination and be allowed time to do this.

I have also included photos from my time at the church to share with the children, including my first day at the church, and to give even more chance for thoughts and conversation.

I'm very excited about what will happen with the sensory book and what the children think about it and do with it.

Sensory visiting bag, church jar

I have my visiting bag but I still want to make it more sensory.

For this I did some research on the internet (oh, how important google is in my job) and thought about previous ideas I have heard.

Based on this I've added various ideas, including a sensory & memory book and some scented jars.

But for this post I wanted to share the church jar with you. The church jar is inspired by some of the work done by the excellent charity, Winston's Wish. This charity do fantastic work helping children and families to cope with serious illness, death and also help those who might be involved with children in these situations. They do this in a variety of ways, some very simple, with advice and also some more creative ways. One of these ways is a feelings jar. It is a jar that has different layers of coloured salt in, each layer of colour chosen for a different emotion the child is feeling. Alternatively it can be used as a memory jar, with each colour representing a different memory. An example of this could be for feelings - red reminds the child of the love the child shared with their parent. An example of memories could be blue to represent the times they went swimming on holiday in the sea.

Based on this inspiring idea I decided to make a church jar. Not only will this be something interesting to share with the children, explaining a bit about church and exploring their feelings about church but it will also be a good for discussing where the idea came from. Some of the children I visit experience loss of a relative, someone from church they cared about or even of a much loved pet. As with adults, the children can experience these emotions in a variety of ways but by having this jar and talking about the inspiration for it may give the children ideas on creating one of their own or thinking about memories they have of someone who may have died or may have just moved away.

The jar I have created brings in the different things I associate with what my church means to me. Each layer relates to a different aspect of church.

layer 1 - white salt. To me this represents Jesus. The purity, the colour of a lamb and the innocence of Jesus. It is the first layer and this is because I think my church is built on the foundation of Jesus and should always be working harder at having Jesus as the focus.

layer 2 - multi-coloured glitter. This represents the people. There is such a variety of people, variety of ages, personalities, experiences, loves and dislikes. But even with their differences they still sparkle together when caught in the light. And glitter gets on everything, my experience when trying to put it in the jar can testify to this, and when we have Jesus as our foundation we can make a difference in all the situations we are in. We can have an affect on people and the situations we are in. There are also lots of different groups and things happening in church.

layer 3 - yellow sand. Very simply the joy and excitement that happens in church.

layer 4 - blue sand. Represents the stillness we have at church. The quietness and prayer time. That there is a place where people care and people listen.

layer 5 - red sand. This links to the communion we share at church and also the range of seasons we celebrate at church. The death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter, the birth of Jesus at Christmas and the thoughts of nature, food for others and more at Harvest.

layer 6 - green sand. Thinking about the different countries in the world that we think of and hoping for peace for all the world.

layer 7 - orange sand. This is partly because I ran out of colours but it just about represents the food we have a church, a lot of our events and groups involve food.

layer 8 - white salt. Jesus should be the beginning and end of all we do and all we are. The alpha and the omega.

I shall blog again with another part of my sensory bag.

Visiting Bag

In one of my previous jobs I worked in administration for the council, in particular the children's Integrated Disability Service (Teaching & Learning). I had the opportunity to be part of the pre-school team, this meant I sat in on children's education plans and funding meetings, made resources for the teams, including the autism, hearing, speech and language teams and made up information packs, minutes, etc for these teams.

But what does that have to do with a visiting bag? Well, my idea to use a resources bag (or something similar) when I go on pastoral visits came from this work done with council - although it has grown from there.

As part of my work I go and visit children and families in their homes. This is the pastoral part of my role and can just be a short thing or involve a whole evening. Sometimes these visits are not just easy times chatting and playing with what the children have but involves needing a stimulus to help conversation or just something to develop "bonding time". Part of these visits are to build friendships with the families but it is also about sharing things about Jesus with them and finding ways to improve church and what we do there.

In most of these visits I take a visiting bag with me. The visiting bag has things to help conversation, games for those who talk better over an activity, books that we can read together and flyers and information for the children.

I would definitely recommend a visiting bag for others who want to visit children and families in their home. I like to make some of the things in the bag more sensory but I will discuss that in a post soon.

My visiting bag was recently stolen out the boot of my car, this gave me the challenge of creating a whole new visiting bag. One of the benefits regarding the bag, is that items in it can be interchanged. Thinking what the the topics coming up in junior church, services, church related groups, holiday clubs or festivals means that items can be placed in the bag that relate to these. For example, when we were talking about Daniel in the lions den, a small soft toy lion was kept in the bag. And when the topic was David and Goliath, a Mr Men book called "Mr Noisy and the Giant" was used to help talk of Holiday Club.

I've included some pictures as there is a lot that goes into the bag, things for travelling, easy to use, child friendly and fun. I'm sure more things will be blogged regarding the great resource that is the visiting bag.